Awakenings - A Story of Growth and Learning

Awakenings movie poster from IMP Awards

Awakenings is a movie that's critically-acclaimed for a good reason; not only was the execution of the plot amazing, it had a magical feel in the way the plot rolls out, in terms of its cinematography and how the casts portray their characters.

What caught my eye the most was Robin Williams' character, Dr. Malcolm Sayer. Dr. Sayer's character is interesting to watch on screen because of the transition of his character from someone who was a professor researching plants with minimal human relationships, to a well-respected doctor in the Bronx Hospital where he's working, as well as forming a close relationship with the nurse in his neurology department, Eleanor Costello. Theories of attraction (from a psychological perspective, not a physics one!) may be able to explain the increase in amount of human relationships that Dr. Sayer has. One of the factors catalysing Dr. Sayer's attraction to other humans could be due to familiarity. By being in contact with another person for a duration of time, a person will develop a form of attraction to the other person. Immediately on Dr. Sayer's first day of work, he had a 180-degree shift from his previous work's lifestyle as he was constantly exposed to people in his neurology department, or infamously known as 'The Garden'. As Dr. Sayer starts interacting with his colleagues and patients, he becomes increasingly fond of them, resulting in him having close relationships with Eleanor, and his patient, Leonard. They were considered to be Dr. Sayer's first friends.

Despite his awkward relationships with other people in the beginning of the movie, Dr. Sayer was also a man who is passionate in his job. For example, Dr. Sayer's love for his research of plants led him to collect mountains of books in his home, and also keeping his plant samples in his refrigerator. At his most recent job as a neurologist, Dr. Sayer found a new purpose in his job, which was finding a cure for his post-encephalitis patients that are catatonic. He became adamant on finding a cure for his patients' conditions upon discovering that his first patient, Lucy, showed a physical response by catching her glasses when Dr. Sayer threw the glasses towards her, a first sign of movement since her and the other patients' catatonic behaviour started. His passion and dedication for finding the cure made Dr. Sayer a non-conformist of sorts, as he did not succumb to the opinions of the other doctors that Lucy's behaviour was just a reflex and that he should give up on his 'wild goose chase'. Relating this back to psychology, sometimes it is best to avoid conforming with the larger group of people and to trust your instincts as you might turn out to be right, like the bystander effect for example when a homeless man lays motionless on the pavement in a city but nobody is helping him due to everybody conforming with each other to not help the man, but your decision to not conform with the people in the area and help the homeless man instead may save his life.

But of course, it was interesting to watch passion revealing its dark side as well. Although Dr. Sayer has a passion that aims to improve the lives of his patients and those around them, his passion became desperation as Dr. Sayer was so insisting on curing his first patient-cum-test subject, Leonard, he did some really unethical acts, such as discreetly upping the dosage of the medicine L-Dopa he was giving to Leonard, without the consent of his pharmacist and Mrs Lowe, Leonard's mother. Not only was Dr. Sayer reckless, but there a risk of danger to Leonard as he might suffer from an overdose. In another scene, Dr. Sayer's passion once again revealed its ugly head when he refused to receive the advice of his fellow doctors and Mrs Lowe in the beginning to stop Leonard's L-Dopa treatment, after he showed uncontrollable muscle twitches as well as being more aggressive, as the drug could have caused these behaviours. Dr. Sayer's refusal to stop Leonard's treatment is known as the sunk cost effect, as he believes that he should carry on with treatment after all the effort he has invested in this despite the detrimental outcome of Leonard. But thankfully he acknowledged that the drug was causing Leonard's negative behaviors at the end and drastically reduced Leonard's dosage. The theme of the dark side of passion has appeared in some movies, including the recent Disney movie Moana.

Moana movie poster from Independent.co.uk

**SPOILER ALERT!**

Moana's determination to return the Heart of Te Fiti to Te Fiti herself even though the situation does not allow her to, endangered not only her own life, but her friend, Maui damaged his irreplaceable magical fish hook that gives him demigod powers, protecting Moana from the attacks of Te Ka, a fire monster that was standing in between Moana and Maui's way to Te Fiti. The disaster could have been avoided if Moana decided to fall back from the scuffle and devise another solution to get past Te Ka and get to Te Fiti.

Let's go back to Awakenings. Dr. Sayer's ability to bring together his team of nurses (And janitor), to help improve the lives of their patients also made me attracted to Dr. Sayer's character. For a man who was poor with human relationships, he was able to convince the nurses in his department that were lazy and slacking off their jobs at first, to become a team that is dedicated to treating these patients. This is a form of social cohesion as everyone in Dr. Sayer's team shared a common goal of curing their patients, which transformed his once inefficient nurses to the most caring and dedicated team in nursing their patients, even after the patients' 'awakening' period has passed and are back to their catatonic state. It was also particularly touching to watch the nurses fork out their own money to convince the hospital head Dr Kaufman to grant Dr. Sayer funding to purchase L-Dopa drugs for his patients. This made me realize that when a group strongly believes in their goals, they will be able to accomplish almost anything in their pursuit of success.