Awakenings.

Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro star in this film about a doctor trying to cure a lot of patients who seem to not actually be living in this world. Not brain dead because they have reflex actions but only respond to certain things and seem to have no control over their movements at all.

Robin Williams is one of those guys who death was devastating. His absence from the world of new films is a hard blow to take and not one that I really want to accept. Watching films like this are so powerful and at times painful to take, knowing that you aren't going to see another performance like that from him again. Don't get me wrong, Robin Williams has been fantastic in so many of his films but his performance was so moving that no one will ever be able to fill his hole or should even be compared to him. The kind and caring doctor that never gave up was perfect and almost typical of what we have come to expect from him (especially if we have seen him in 'Patch Adams'). It was the side of him that was bold and able to say 'No' to patients and actually not always push for them to be trying new things. A calm and composed character at all times that understood his duty as a doctor first and foremost.

Now that I have spent time praising Williams I have to turn to DeNiro, who usually features on this blog in a gangster/mafia movie. A few months ago (if that) I wrote about the performance of Dustin Hoffman in 'Rain Man' and how fantastic Hoffman is, how real his performance of a highly functioning person on the Autistic spectrum was and it can only be fair to do the same kind of thing for DeNiro. This character wasn't autistic but he was playing a guy that was woken up by medication thirty years after getting sick. The man (Leonard) then has to get used to society, only for the medication to produce bad side effects that eventually cause him to be taken off the medication and he goes back to being practically non-responsive. The way the convulsions were produced and also the slight changes in personality, then leading to the drastic changes, followed by a relatively quick return to being the same character that we had become familiar with was fantastic. Everything was real, at no point did I feel that it was someone trying to hard or something not entirely natural.
Just like Dustin Hoffman, Robert DeNiro has really stepped up his game in this film and produced something of a masterclass in a completely different way to what we would expect from him. I was so stunned and proud. I am so glad that this film (which I knew nothing about and thought was a horror film) made its way on to the blog!