Awakenings is a 1990 American biographical drama film written by Steven Zaillian, directed by Penny Marshall, and starring Robert De Niro, Robin Williams, Julie Kavner, Ruth Nelson, John Heard, Penelope Ann Miller, Peter Stormare and Max von Sydow.

The patients - among them the focal character Leonard Lowe (De Niro) - are awakened after decades and must therefore try to acclimate to life in a new and unfamiliar time.

Actions such as catching a ball, hearing familiar music, being called by their name, and enjoying human touch, each have unique effects on particular patients and offer a glimpse into their worlds.

This success inspires Sayer to ask for funding from donors, so that all the catatonic patients can receive the L-DOPA medication and gain "awakenings" to reality and the present.

Sayer tells a group of hospital grant donors that, although the "awakening" did not last, another kind — one of learning to appreciate and live life — occurred.

For example, he overcomes his painful shyness and asks Nurse Eleanor Costello to go out for coffee, many months after he had declined a similar invitation from her.

On September 15, 1989, Liz Smith reported that those being considered for the role of Leonard Lowe's mother were Kaye Ballard, Shelley Winters and Anne Jackson;[2] not quite three weeks later, Newsday named Nancy Marchand as the leading contender.

[3] In January 1990 — more than three quarters of the way through the film's four-month shooting schedule[4][5][6] — the matter was seemingly resolved, when the February 1990 issue of Premiere magazine published a widely cited story, belatedly informing fans that, not only had Winters gotten the role, she had been targeted at De Niro's request, and had been cast by displaying her Oscar awards (for the benefit of veteran casting director, Bonnie Timmermann).

[14]Despite Liz Smith's, Newsday's and Premiere's seemingly definitive reports (which, minus any mention of the specific film being discussed, would be periodically reiterated and ultimately embellished in subsequent years),[15][16] the film was released in December 1990, featuring neither Winters (whose early dismissal evidently resulted from continuing attempts to pull rank on director Penny Marshall)[17][18] nor any of the other previously publicized candidates (nor at least two others, Jo Van Fleet and Teresa Wright, identified in subsequent accounts),[19][20] but rather the then-85-year-old Group Theater alumnus, Ruth Nelson, giving a well-received performance in what would be her final feature film.

She was a New York stage actress in the 1930s who transitioned to movies but was blacklisted in the 1950s when her second husband was among those Senator Joseph McCarthy labeled a Communist.

[23]Principal photography for Awakenings began on October 16, 1989, at the Kingsboro Psychiatric Center in Brooklyn, New York, which was operating, and lasted until February 16, 1990.

[24] In addition to Kingsboro, sequences were filmed at the New York Botanical Garden, Julia Richman High School, the Casa Galicia, and Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Its consensus states: "Elevated by some of Robin Williams'[s] finest non-comedic work and a strong performance from Robert De Niro, Awakenings skirts the edges of melodrama, then soars above it.

What both the movie and the book convey is the immense courage of the patients and the profound experience of their doctors, as in a small way they reexperienced what it means to be born, to open your eyes and discover to your astonishment that "you" are alive.

[34]Desson Howe of The Washington Post said that the film's tragic aspects did not live up to the strength in its humor, saying, When nurse Julie Kavner (another former TV being) delivers the main Message (life, she tells Williams, is "given and taken away from all of us"), it doesn't sound like the climactic point of a great movie.

[35]Similarly, Janet Maslin of The New York Times concluded her review by stating, Awakenings works harder at achieving such misplaced liveliness than at winning its audience over in other ways.