Choosing from the list of movies to watch for this assignment, I was intrigued most by Awakenings. First, the actors in this film are two of my favorite of all time. Robin Williams and Robert De Niro are the perfect pair of neurologist and patient. Dr. Sayer is not your typical doctor. His entire career is based upon experiments, studies, and little experience with hands on medical attention, especially with patients as complex as those in the medical ward he is about to embark upon. In the movie, Awakenings, Dr. Sayer becomes employed in a medical ward crowded with comatose patients. After just a few days of being there, he cannot stand the thought that this many people are being treated as if they have no hope of ever recovering from their conditions. It is in that moment, that Dr.Sayer decides to do something about it. He discovers that many of the patients survived encephalitis lethargic many years ago. He then find a possible drug to cure them called L-Dopa. In order for this experiment and drug to be successful Dr. Sayer needed someone to focus his attention on while giving correct dosages of L-Dopa. He chooses Leonard Lowe who has been catatonic since he was twenty years old. Throughout the film Dr.Sayer studies Leonard’s response to L-Dopa …show more content…
When going to show this new discovery to fellow doctors they call it a “reflex”. Dr. Sayer instantly corrects him and says it is more than a reflex because Lucy, the patient, not only notices the ball and lets it hit her, but she catches it with a firm grasp. In Chapter 2, we learned that the spinal cord carries sensory information up to the brain and carries motor signals from the brain to the body parts to initiate action. Lucy being capable of catching the ball shows that the connections between her spinal cord and the brain are
The awakening is plenty of characters that describe in a very loyal way the society of the nineteenth century in America. Among the most important ones there are Edna Pontellier, Léonce Pontellier, Madame Lebrun, Robert Lebrun, Victor Lebrun, Alcée Arobin, Adéle Ratignolle and Mademoiselle Reisz.
Sayers, he was a new doctor and worked at a mental hospital in the Bronx. The hospital he worked at had all kinds of patients with weird and different diseases or disorders. Dr. Sayers had a goal and according to the article, Bringing Statues to Life, his goals was, "To help these people breakout of their semiconscious state"(Fehlhaber). This quote explains all he wanted was to achieve this and the goal to be successful. He looked at the many different kinds of disorders and diseases, before the one had caught his eye. The disease/disorder that had caught his eye were the patients, who had the extreme version of Parkinsonism. These patients have been catatonic for decades. The article Bringing Statues to life, it explains that, "He had heard about a new experiment drug, L-Dopa, which was being used to treat patients with Parkinson's disease" (Fehlhaber), so he thought he would try it on the others with the disease. Leonard was the Dr. Sayer first patient to try the drug and the main patient he worked with. He video taped Leonard throughout the experiment and explained the disease and what was happening. During his journey, Dr. Sayers discovered that the patients would move to certain kinds of music, catching a ball or an object, or touch familiar objects. A while after using L-Dopa, they had seen a jaw dropping sight, Leonard was out of his catatonic state and was awake! So then they decided to use the drug on the other
The movie begins in 1920 with a young Leonard Lowe showing outwards signs of disease still yet unknown. The movie then jumps to 1969, where Dr. Malcolm Sayer works at a Chronic Hospital in New York City. During his time at the hospital, he begins to have a theory that people suffering from post-encephalitis can be cured, so he begins his experiments to prove his theory. After his tests, he believes that a drug named L-DOPA will help his patients, he gives Leonard the drug and he wakes up, which convinces the hospital donors to give more money, and in the end all of Sayer’s patients wake up. However, the medicine begins to wear off, and the condition returns, in the end all the patients return into their cationic state.
Marshall's best directorial accomplishment had to be in "Awakenings" starring Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams. This film was nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor (Robert DeNiro), and for Best Adapted Screenplay. Penny Marshall's style is classical. "Awakenings" and "Big" in particular are based upon a three-act structure. "A League of their Own" and "Big" are tall tales, strongly centered on plot. There exists good and bad people, and characters that are changed by their experiences (Dr.
As the ball is released from the pitcher's arm and starts to make its way down to the batter, light reflects off of the softball and travels to our eyes where it enters through the pupil. Once inside it continues through into the retina where it translates the light waves into nerves and is carried to the brain, which the optic nerve and retina are apart of. The image of the softball arrives to the optical lobe of the brain where it is processed and
Growing up, our parents are always telling us that doing drugs can have bad consequences in our lives. Many films in today’s film industry are portraying drugs as the cause of an amazing time accidently encouraging that the use of drugs is totally fine. Requiem for a Dream is directed by Darren Aronofsky. This film shows that utilizing drugs can be all fun in games, but will lead to a very destructive destruction that can affect the drug user and everyone in the addicts surrounding. The movie shows the struggle that four individuals go through to overcome such a strong drug addiction. Aronofsky was very creative when presenting the subject matter; he used certain cinematography, themes, and directorial techniques to tell the audience the story.
	Books, more often than not, are better than the movies that are made from them. This is due to the immense power of our imaginations. Readers use their imaginations to fill the space that exists between him/herself and the book with such things as dreams, past experiences, and hopes. For this reason, there is much more depth and symbolic depictions in the novella, The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, compared with the movie version, Grand Isle. Due to this, the effect on the reader is much more potent than the effect on the viewer.
While he did not use the word "narcolepsy," he wrote about patients experiencing "a sleepy disposition who suddenly fall fast asleep” (White). After nearly two centuries, two German doctors named Westphal and Fisher studied patients who would randomly fall asleep. These patients also experienced other symptoms such as dream-like hallucinations while they were awake and "automatic behavior," which caused them to perform daily tasks while they were still asleep (White). The symptoms they studied long ago are the symptoms of narcolepsy that we now know today. Westphal was the first doctor who clinically described narcolepsy as a physical disorder due to loss of muscle control. The term “narcolepsy” was first discovered in 1880 by Jean Baptiste E. Gelineau, a neuropsychiatrist in France, who recognized a group of patients who had irresistible sleep triggered by strong emotions (Khran, 2001). To create the name of this sleep disorder, he combined the Greek words, narke (numbness, stupor) and lepsis (an attack, seizure). In 1902, the term “cataplexy”, was created by a physician named Loëwenfeld. Then finally in 1957, Mayo clinic doctors Robert Yoss and David Daly officially united the four classic narcolepsy symptoms (White). The four symptoms are what add up to make narcolepsy a unique sleeping
Perhaps an even stronger testament to the deepness of cinema is Darren Aronofsky’s stark, somber Requiem for a Dream. Centering on the drug-induced debasement of four individuals searching for the abstract concept known as happiness, Requiem for a Dream brims with verisimilitude and intensity. The picture’s harrowing depiction of the characters’ precipitous fall into the abyss has, in turn, fascinated and appalled, yet its frank, uncompromising approach leaves an indelible imprint in the minds of young and old alike.
Lilly was a psychoanalyst and neurophysiologist who set out to create an environment in which he could conduct scientific research on the brain and explore its electrical activity. He was seeking to answer questions which had evaded him thus far in the several decades of his prior research. After concluding that he could go no further in his research of the correspondence between brain and mind without harming or changing the brain, Lilly began seeking answers in a different realm, the brain’s consciousness. In particular, he was curious about what was required for the brain to remain in a conscious state. At the time, science had two contrasting theories on this matter. The first was that the brain required external stimulus to remain conscious.
The Gate- Control theory conceives that the spinal cord contains a neurological “gate” that either blocks pain signals or allows them to pass on to the brain. The spinal cord contains small nerve fibers that conduct most pain signals and larger fibers that contain most other sensory signals. When the tissue is injured, the small fibers activate and open the neural gate causing...
A Beautiful Mind tells the life story of John Nash, a Nobel Prize winner who struggled through most of his adult life with schizophrenia. Directed by Ron Howard, this becomes a tale not only of one man's battle to overcome his own disability, but of the overreaching power of love - a theme that has been shown by many films that I enjoy.
The setting of Inception is idiosyncratic for it divides each section of its dream world into distinct sceneries to help the audience differentiate location and tone. Cinematographer Wally Pfister designed the film’s location with diverse color hues and modern decor. Each dream level portrays an exclusive appearance from cool blue mountain peaks to warmly lit hotel floors. This separates the worlds allowing the audience to appreciate each setting in its entirety. Likewise, these settings provide insight into the tone of the narrative structure. The film exhibits expansive, sleek dream environments to contrast with angular, warmly lit locations paralleling a contemporary psychological thriller with science-fiction. The pressure for Cobb to complete his mission progresses from the tonality of each setting in v...
How do movies affect our brain? Is the movie culture directing our thoughts in a certain path? Do movies change our behavior? Do movies carry a certain message? Perhaps a warning? These are all questions that we don’t normally give much thought to when we watch a film. However, it is important to employ our critical thinking skills when we analyze a movie we just watched.