... is just one of the many quotable quotes in this film that will stick with you. This one is one of my personal favorites and just about as perfect as modern (post 1970) movie making gets. The messages and comparisons of the film are rather obvious, but the individual scenes, the characters, and the acting are superlative.
Malcolm Sayer (Robin Williams) is a complex individual - he's a physician - a healer of men - who is scared to death of all mankind. In fact he seems to be scared of all living things including a friendly neighborhood dog. He's gotten away with pure research positions up to the present, but now, in 1969 and in need of a job, he takes a job as a physician in a chronic care hospital. Now here's the complexity - You'd think a man who is afraid of other people would just sit back and perform his rounds and be grateful to be around patients who are as physically catatonic as he is emotionally catatonic. However, his humanity and intellectual curiosity are stronger than his fear and desire to hide as he begins to notice "patterns" in both the behavior and in the records of some of his patients that makes him believe that they may still be "alive inside". This leads to research that pinpoints one illness that all of the patients had in common - encephalitis lethargica that spread worldwide from 1917 to 1928. After the illness subsided, sometimes years later, would the catatonia gradually set in.
Dr. Sayer manages - with great difficulty - to get funding to try a new drug on these particular patients, and they awaken, some after 40 years, many in their 60's physically, but in their 20's emotionally.
The focus of the movie, though, is on the friendship that forms between Leonard Lowe (Robert DeNiro), a 50 year old victim of the disease, and Dr.Sayer. Leonard's mother (Ruth Nelson as Mrs. Lowe) is one of the few people visiting on a regular basis after all of these years - Leonard has been here for 30 years, ill since age 11, catatonic since age 20. So the focus is on Leonard's love of life once awakened versus Dr. Sayer's fear of it - this is the obvious part of the film. However that doesn't take anything away from De Niro doing a great job of playing someone who isn't a tough guy for a change and from Robin Williams from playing one of his most dramatic roles, both characters extremely vulnerable in their own way. Julie Kavner is pitch perfect as Dr. Sayer's loyal ,hard working, and assertive nurse and assistant. Ruth Nelson gives a performance of a lifetime, just two years before her death, as a mother who has dedicated her life to a son she remembers as and has cared for as a child for almost 40 years but is a bit perplexed when he awakens as a man and his fancy turns towards love. For once she has a rival for her son's attention, which is not unusual. What is unusual is that she has to deal with this 30 years later than most mothers.
There are heartbreaking scenes, there are funny scenes, and one scene in particular that brings to light how people sometimes will dismiss something as possible because it just seems too horrible. My favorite scene in this latter category: Dr. Sayer, when doing his research on the catatonic patients, visits the eminent physician Dr. Peter Ingham (Max Von Sydow). Ingham was dealing with the catatonia when it first developed in the 20's and 30's. When Dr. Sayer asks Dr. Ingham how he knows that the virus has not spared the patients higher faculties he responds: "Because the alternative is unspeakable." Classic.
Malcolm Sayer (Robin Williams) is a complex individual - he's a physician - a healer of men - who is scared to death of all mankind. In fact he seems to be scared of all living things including a friendly neighborhood dog. He's gotten away with pure research positions up to the present, but now, in 1969 and in need of a job, he takes a job as a physician in a chronic care hospital. Now here's the complexity - You'd think a man who is afraid of other people would just sit back and perform his rounds and be grateful to be around patients who are as physically catatonic as he is emotionally catatonic. However, his humanity and intellectual curiosity are stronger than his fear and desire to hide as he begins to notice "patterns" in both the behavior and in the records of some of his patients that makes him believe that they may still be "alive inside". This leads to research that pinpoints one illness that all of the patients had in common - encephalitis lethargica that spread worldwide from 1917 to 1928. After the illness subsided, sometimes years later, would the catatonia gradually set in.
Dr. Sayer manages - with great difficulty - to get funding to try a new drug on these particular patients, and they awaken, some after 40 years, many in their 60's physically, but in their 20's emotionally.
The focus of the movie, though, is on the friendship that forms between Leonard Lowe (Robert DeNiro), a 50 year old victim of the disease, and Dr.Sayer. Leonard's mother (Ruth Nelson as Mrs. Lowe) is one of the few people visiting on a regular basis after all of these years - Leonard has been here for 30 years, ill since age 11, catatonic since age 20. So the focus is on Leonard's love of life once awakened versus Dr. Sayer's fear of it - this is the obvious part of the film. However that doesn't take anything away from De Niro doing a great job of playing someone who isn't a tough guy for a change and from Robin Williams from playing one of his most dramatic roles, both characters extremely vulnerable in their own way. Julie Kavner is pitch perfect as Dr. Sayer's loyal ,hard working, and assertive nurse and assistant. Ruth Nelson gives a performance of a lifetime, just two years before her death, as a mother who has dedicated her life to a son she remembers as and has cared for as a child for almost 40 years but is a bit perplexed when he awakens as a man and his fancy turns towards love. For once she has a rival for her son's attention, which is not unusual. What is unusual is that she has to deal with this 30 years later than most mothers.
There are heartbreaking scenes, there are funny scenes, and one scene in particular that brings to light how people sometimes will dismiss something as possible because it just seems too horrible. My favorite scene in this latter category: Dr. Sayer, when doing his research on the catatonic patients, visits the eminent physician Dr. Peter Ingham (Max Von Sydow). Ingham was dealing with the catatonia when it first developed in the 20's and 30's. When Dr. Sayer asks Dr. Ingham how he knows that the virus has not spared the patients higher faculties he responds: "Because the alternative is unspeakable." Classic.