Time of awakening

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Movie
German title Time of awakening
Original title Awakenings
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1990
length 116 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Penny Marshall
script Steven Zaillian
production Lawrence Lasker ,
Walter F. Parkes
music Randy Newman
camera Miroslav Ondříček
cut Battle Davis ,
Gerald B. Greenberg
occupation
synchronization

Time of Awakening (Original title: Awakenings ) is an American drama from 1990 . The Director led Penny Marshall , the writer wrote Steven Zaillian based on Oliver Sacks ' book Awakenings ( consciousness dawns , German 1989). The main roles were played by Robert De Niro and Robin Williams . The film is based on real events that the British doctor Oliver Sacks experienced in New York's Montefiore Medical Center in the 1960s .

plot

The film begins with a brief account of Leonard Lowe's childhood. His teacher notices that he has physical problems writing. His mother then keeps the apparently sick Leonard at home.

Thirty years later, in the 1960s, New York City doctor Malcolm Sayer worked at Bainbridge Hospital with patients who had suffered from European sleeping sickness for decades . They show no reaction to their environment and are considered incurable. Leonard Lowe is one of them, he is still visited and cared for by his mother. By accident, Sayer discovers that his patients are not completely apathetic as there are stimuli to which they respond. For example, they catch thrown or falling objects.

Sayer begins to study Leonard Lowe and encourages him to put his name on a spelling machine. Lowe, who read a lot as a child, spells the title of the poem The Panther instead . This leads Sayer to the conviction that the apparently comatose, cramped patients are actually wide awake and simply cannot communicate. He notices that they all had encephalitis in the past , from which he concludes that their current condition is a long-term consequence.

Sayer learns about a drug called levodopa, or L-dopa for short, which is used to treat Parkinson's disease . Since he interprets the syndrome of his patients as a kind of “concentrated Parkinson's disease”, he tries the remedy, initially only on Leonard. Leonard suffers from the encephalitic late effects of the Spanish flu , an influenza - pandemic caused by the subtype A / H1N1 , which had spread from 1918 to 1920 in three waves, and led to a secondary parkinsonism. In fact, a high dose of it miraculously turns Lowe into a normally interacting person, conversing with his mother, reflecting on his surroundings, having normal conversations and ultimately even falling in love with a visitor.

Sayer uses the remedy on all of his patients and thus brings the ward to life. The patients engage with each other and form a community.

After a while, however, Lowe began to show severe side effects. He demands to be allowed to walk freely, which he is denied. After an attempt to break out violently, he is arrested and has severe movement disorders, but incites other patients against the imprisonment in the clinic. Leonard's mother doubts whether the "awakening" was really good for her son.

Eventually, Lowe and the others fall back into a coma. But since the nursing staff now knows that awake, feeling people are hidden in the apparently lifeless bodies, the patients are treated with more respect and care from now on. Sayer continues to research drugs and still has some success, but an awakening like the 1969 one will never happen again.

synchronization

The German-language dubbing the film was shot in Magma Synchron GmbH in Berlin , after a dialogue book and the dialogue director of Joachim Kunz village .

role actor German speaker
Leonard Lowe Robert De Niro Christian Brückner
Dr. Malcolm Sayer Robin Williams Peer Augustinski
Eleanor Costello Julie Kavner Andrea Brix
Mrs. Lowe Ruth Nelson Christine Gerlach
Dr. Kaufman John Heard Joachim Tennstedt
Paula Penelope Ann Miller Daniela Hoffmann
Dr. Peter Ingham Max von Sydow Jürgen Thormann
Lucy Alice Drummond Christel Merian
rose Judith Malina Hannelore Minkus
Miriam Anne Meara Luise Lunow
Neurochemist Peter Stormare Bernd Rumpf
Nurse Vin Diesel Marco Kroeger

Soundtrack

The music was composed by Randy Newman .

reception

Reviews

source rating
Rotten tomatoes
critic
audience
Metacritic
critic
audience
IMDb

The Lexicon of International Films writes: “A film based on actual events, which equips the medically and humanitarian complex case with an abundance of cinema clichés and exploits one-sidedly emotionally. A demonstration of the old insight that a tear-shedding audience is by no means proof of a good film. "

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars out of four, writing:

“After seeing Awakenings , I read it, to know more about what happened in that Bronx hospital. What both the movie and the book convey is the immense courage of the patients and the profound experience of their doctors, as in a small way they reexperienced what it means to be born, to open your eyes and discover to your astonishment that you are alive . ”

“After seeing Time of Awakening , I read the book to learn more about what was going on in that hospital in the Bronx. What the film and the book convey is the immense courage of the patients and the profound experience of the doctors as they relived on a small scale what it means to be born, to open your eyes and to discover in amazement that you are alive. "

Rita Kempley praised the portrayal of Robert De Niro in the Washington Post of January 11, 1991. She also expressed appreciation for the work of Julie Kavner, Penelope Ann Miller, Keith Diamond and Dexter Gordon, the script and the direction.

Urs Jenny writes in Der Spiegel : “The care that Penny Marshall's film pays to the presentation of clinical processes is extremely unusual, but the ingredients with which he rounds it off to make cinema history remain flat: How the brave doctor has to fight the indifferent institutional bureaucracy; how shyness he does not want to notice that the sister, who is so enthusiastically at his side, is in love with him; how the awakened Leonard blossoms in the crush for a pretty asylum-goer - those are sentimentalities from a doctor's novel. "

Awards

Lead actor Robert De Niro , producers Walter F. Parkes and Lawrence Lasker, and screenwriter Steven Zaillian were nominated for an Oscar in 1991 . Robin Williams was nominated for a Golden Globe in 1991 .

Robert De Niro and Robin Williams won the National Board of Review Award in 1990 . Robert De Niro won the New York Film Critics Circle Award in 1990 .

Oliver Sacks and Steven Zaillian won the USC Scripter Award in 1991 . Steven Zaillian was nominated for the 1991 Writers Guild of America Award .

Randy Newman was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1992 . The film was nominated for the Japanese Academy Award in 1992 .

The Wiesbaden film evaluation agency awarded the adult age the rating particularly valuable.

background

The film grossed approximately $ 52.1 million in US cinemas .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Time of Awakening. In: synchronkartei.de. German dubbing index , accessed on May 20, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b Awakenings at Rotten Tomatoes , accessed October 22, 2014.
  3. ↑ a b Awakenings at Metacritic , accessed October 22, 2014.
  4. ^ Time of Awakening in the Internet Movie Database .
  5. ↑ Time of Awakening. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed February 26, 2017 . 
  6. ↑ Roger Ebert: Awakenings. In: rogerebert.com. Chicago Sun-Times , December 20, 1990, accessed February 16, 2013 .
  7. ^ Rita Kempley: Awakenings. In: The Washington Post. January 11, 1991.
  8. ↑ Urs Jenny : Get up and walk! In: Der Spiegel . February 11, 1991. Retrieved June 10, 2019.
  9. ↑ Awakenings. In: Box Office Mojo . Retrieved June 10, 2019.