Few years ago, I watched 'The Pursuit of Happiness', a film inspired by a true story of a single father, Chris Gardner who struggles in life and being homeless for nearly a year with his son. The film reminded me so much about things that I've taken for granted in life. After watching the film, I felt a sense of embarrassment of the way that I've lived. Throughout my life, I have gotten most everything I wanted so easily to the point that I never learn to appreciate them.
'The Awakening' is another brilliant film that reminded us how we have all taken our lives for granted. Being a well-functioning person, it never occur to me how it feels like to not being able to walk, to run, to talk and what's more, to be awake. We go to sleep every night thinking that we will eventually wake up tomorrow. But never have we realized that being able to wake up in the morning and be yourself again is actually a blessing.
This film is a story about the extraordinary work of a doctor in Bronx Hospital who managed to use a drug, L-Dopa to treat a group catatonic patients. Dr. Malcolm Sayer was a new doctor who came to work at this chronic hospital. Initially, he was not used to these patients and had no hope in treating them at all. But things changed after he met Lucy, a catatonic patient who showed no response, movements or facial expressions but somehow she changed her position each time when Dr. Sayer was not looking. Apparently, she was trying to catch her glasses as they fell. Dr. Sayer then began to experiment on her with a ball which she caught onto quickly and found that she was borrowing the will of the ball in order to move. Soon after this odd encounter, Dr. Sayer found a group of patients with similar disease. They were all patients who were catatonic and suffered from encephalitis lethargica. These are patients who suffered from a horrible fate of being trapped inside their body. Some doctors said that these patients had no consciousness,
as if they were dead in their own body. But Dr. Sayer believed the opposite.
When Dr Sayer successfully managed to cure one of the
patients, Leonard, Leonard's experiences in the film enlightened us on how life
should be lived. The awakening that Leonard had was as if his rebirth after so
many years. Leonard's mother has been taking care of him since he was 20 and
all these years he never talked to her or did he ever respond to her. But now that
he was conscious again, Leonard saw his mother and called out to his mother for
the first time after so many years. Although it was heart breaking to see
Leonard discovered that he'd lost 30 years of his life to the disease and now
that he was awaken, he was no longer the young boy he was, it was also good to
see him being optimistic and tried to live his life from the moment. However,
Leonard was not the only one accepting the change after the awakening though,
his mother was too. It is possible that his mother was still treating him like
a child because it seemed like it was hard for her to acknowledge that he no
longer needed her by his side all the time.
One of the scenes that made an impression on my thoughts was the scene where Leonard refused to go to bed and sleep. It was as if he was afraid that he would not be able to wake up once he went to sleep. We often take things like this for granted in life but to Leonard, to be able to wake up after being trapped inside his own body for so long, it was indeed a blessing. Similarly with the scene where Leonard told the camera that it felt like a dream but he knew it was not a dream when Dr. Sayer could understand what he said. Simple things like that seemed to be a miracle for patients like Leonard.
When Leonard had a meeting with the committees of the hospital and he was asked what was it that he wanted, he demanded the simplest thing in life - to have freedom, to be able to take a walk on his own and to live. I could still remember the words that he told Dr. Sayer, "People have forgotten what life is all about. They've forgotten what it is to be alive. They have to be reminded." Leonard had been through life experience in which he could not live normally. Sometimes, it feels as if it takes death to remind you what it feels to be alive. You will never know how good it is to be able to walk until you lose the ability to walk. Similarly, you will never know how good it is to be able to see until you lose your ability to see.
By the end of the film, Leonard and the other patients began to lose their awakenings. It was rather sad to see the patients returning to their catatonic states as if it was a curse. The feeling of guilt and sorry that Dr. Sayer was feeling for the patient showed that he was a good doctor who tried his best of giving life to his patients (a responsibility which previous doctors have neglected) but unfortunately, lost to the fate decided by God. There was one saying by Dr. Sayer which showed how much he regretted. He told his nurse, "how kind is it to give life, only to take it away." The patients, including Leonard, too was trying their best to battle with their disease. But it was a fight that they were losing. Even though the patients did not have a chance to fully recover, their story had taught us how important it is to value our well-beings and the gift of being able to live as a healthy person.
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