Awakenings (1990)

"How kind is it to give life only to take it away again?"

"It's given and taken away from all of us."

"Why doesn't that comfort me?"

How fitting and applicable those aforementioned words (from a wonderful script by Steven Zaillian) are to life given the unexpected and untimely passing of actress and director Penny Marshall (1943-2018) on December 17, the director of this wonderful film Awakenings (1990).

This post had been prepared before her passing, but it seemed appropriate to publish it out of respect and love for this woman's work.



As a kid I grew up on a steady diet of Gilligan's Island (1964-1967), Happy Days (1974-1984) and many others. Laverne And Shirley (1976-1983; 178 episodes; created by her brother Garry Marshall), a Happy Days spin-off, was another of those television phenomenon that culturally indoctrinated me in which Marshall starred. I'm not sure I ever loved the show, but I watched it regularly just the same. I was still somehow riveted by the antics of Laverne and Shirley (a la I Love Lucy) and the vast array of supporting characters from Carmine Ragusa to Michael McKean's Lenny Kosnowski and David Lander's Andrew Squiggy Squiggman. You still laugh just thinking about them.



So it was a rather pleasant revelation to see actress Penny Marshall move to directing films with Big (1988), further launching the career of Tom Hanks and then next two of my favorite films of the 1990s, Awakenings (1990) and A League Of Their Own (1992). These were wonderful pictures and entertaining films that seemed to capture Marshall's voice for a time, one of the few female artists behind the camera that has now gone silent.



For Awakenings, Marshall put away the laughs instead relating to more affecting matters of the human heart and spirit. Marshall was so adept, as she was in her sitcom, at unearthing real humanity. It can't be denied she unabashedly pulls at the heartstrings in this one in exploring that depth of emotion that can be awakened in all of us.

In 1978, Marshall appeared in the Pilot episode for the career launching turn of Robin Williams' Mork on Mork & Mindy (1978-1992; another Happy Days spin-off). How funny the two would reunite twelve years later in the midst of blossoming careers.



I wanted to sit and watch Awakenings again as a fan of both Marshall and Williams' work during that period. Sure Robert DeNiro was good. Penelope Ann Miller was terrific. Julie Kavner, the voice of Marge Simpson (another series in which Marshall appeared), flawless. Max Von Sydow and Peter Stormare even guest. But for me it was always Williams' film in the role of Dr. Malcolm Sayer, based upon a memoir by Dr. Oliver Sacks, at the direction of Marshall, and seeing it again reminds me how much I miss his work. More recent fare like Boulevard (2014) and One Hour Photo (2002) were good but Awakenings was one of his ten best. I just never tire of his understated performance in this film. There is something so relative for me about Williams' gentile nature, his kindness, his sweetness, the quiet dignity here that I recognize and connect with from within myself.



This seemingly kindler, gentler institutional alternative to Milos Forman's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975) aside, the powerful Awakenings is a wonderfully sweet and portrayed character study about a man also in need of awakening and connection as much as his patients.

For me it was Williams with Marshall that make Awakenings so wonderful and worth returning to even as the Blu-Ray has appeared in an unfortunately bare bones form, time and again.



As noted earlier I miss Robin Williams and the boy in me who loved Laverne And Shirley and the man in me who loved her films will dearly miss Marshall too.

If anything Williams, Marshall and their film remind us its never too late to awaken, wake up, and find the joys of life now more than ever.



Director: Penny Marshall. Writer: Steven Zaillian.

 

Grade: A