His gaze is so wearied from the bars
Passing by, that it can hold no more.
It’s as if a thousand bars were given him:
And behind the thousand bars, no world.
The soft pace of his powerful, supple stride,
That draws him round in tightened circles,
Is like the dance of force about a centre,
In which a greater will stands paralysed.
Only, at times, the curtain of his pupils
Silently rises – Then an image enters,
Rushes through his tense, arrested limbs,
And echoing, inside his heart, is gone.
–Rilke’s “The Panther”
I found the film while browsing in a dusty nook of the film section at the local library. Although two very prominent Hollywood actors starred in the flick, I had never before heard of the title. On my way to work, I checked the film out and left it on my coffee table, to be viewed after a long weekend of 12 hour shifts.
Funny how great gifts come in small, dusty, 1990 VHS cases. The movie _Awakenings_ with Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro was just that sort of gift. The based-on-a-true-story plot centered around a socially-awkward medical researcher in the 1960s (Williams) who stumbles upon an unclassified sickness while working in an asylum. Many people in the hospital display the same catatonic gaze, and have the same rigid-body disposition. The doctors in the asylum scoff at Williams, who tries to communicate humanly with his patients. Eventually, Williams and a nurse form bonds with the patients, who all others consider to be mentally vacant. The climax occurs when Williams lobbies the board of the asylum to administer a medication, which will bring the patients out of their coma-like existence and relieve the symptoms of their illness.
The first patient to receive the medication is played by Robert DeNiro. Suddenly, as though illuminated by a single candle, DeNiro’s soul is brought out of the darkness and into the light. He can speak, walk, talk, and slowly re-socializes himself to the world he left behind some 30 years ago. He is able to talk about how his disease felt, how it felt to be locked up in the confines of his own body, especially when he was mentally alert. DeNiro reads literature, listens to music, and challenges himself to love others and live fully. The other patients receive the same medication and they, too, are brought into the light. They begin to live more fully than most other people because they have known what it was like to be in chains.
Unfortunately, the medication’s affects are only temporary and also produce a whole slew of side affects that, with time, are worse than the actual disease that DeNiro had in the first place. Slowly but surely, the sparkle in DeNiro’s eyes diminishes to the catatonic gaze of the disease, and he is laid to rest in the same institutional bed.
I’ve spoiled the ending of the movie, but I’ve done so because in this case the ending of the film is not what makes this movie extraordinary. Like Shakespearean drama, it is not the beginning nor ending of this move which draws the viewers’ attentions, but rather the journey it takes in the meanwhile. Such a quality is rarely found in modern film.
So what is it about the “journey” of this film that sets it apart from others? Surely it examines the ethical paradoxes of caregiving and experimental treatment, as well as the benefits/ drawbacks of institutions in general. However the biggest strength of the film was its portrayal of the human soul at its finest. We learn that humanity is not confined to the realm of intelligent, communicative beings, but that those in a comatose, disabled, or insane state are every bit as human as you or I. We learn that our human-ness sometimes transcends professional-patient boundaries to remind us of one of the greatest purpose in life: to love others.
I would recommend this film to anyone, but specifically those who find themselves in caregiving vocations. I have spent several years working as a personal care worker, a job that, for me, has always meant a very difficult mixture of stress and love for my clients that few outside the job can really understand. It was as though this movie acted as one huge catharsis for all those precarious times I’ve spent with my clients, not knowing whether to laugh, cry, or punch a wall. It validated something that I am often too stressed-out to celebrate in: that my clients, though they cannot communicate or wipe themselves, have a soul that is as precious as my own.
