Awakenings

            What will you do when you have a close family member who suffered with psychological disease? Will you stay away from him/her and send him/her to a hospital without giving any caring and love, or will you stand beside him/her and provide courage and patience when he/she needs? The movie “Awakenings” makes me reflect and question myself, “How much effort do I willing to put in in order to deal with abnormal people, regardless of who the person is?” I started to question myself when I see how determined and enthusiastic the physician in the movie, Dr Malcolm Sayer is in finding the ways to treat and cure his patients. He is unwilling to give up but trying very hard in searching for the method to cure epidemic of encephalitis lethargica, a disease that leads the victims to stay in statue-like state without being able to speak and move, even though his perseverance is being teased by other physicians. After many attempts, he finally finds out that the medicine, L-Dopa (specifically for Parkinson’s disease) could play miracle effect and bring the patients back from “coma” state. Even when the Leonard, the first patient who inhales L-dopa, shows side-effects and signs of relapse, he never gives up but keep doing researches and experiments to find a better solution. Although he fails in the end and all the patients who receive the treatment return back to the “coma” state, he manages to create a miracle for them to wake up and enjoy a short period of normal life. Besides, Leonard’s mother has portrayed a love of a mother towards her son and how selfless she is in taking care of her son who does not respond to her for many years. How strong she is to pass though all these suffering experiences alone, yet still willing to stay positive in hoping her son would recover. The determination and optimism shown by both characters in this life-affirming movie had enlighten me to hold hopes towards life and never abandon any lives even under difficult conditions.

            Moreover, I have learned that we should always treat patients as a human-being, no matter what type of diseases they are suffering with. Leonard in this movie has revealed the longings of a person towards freedom and being treated equally. However, his wishes of being a normal person are being deprived by the doctors as they assumed that he is still not qualified enough to blend himself into the real life which he has missed for many years. To some certain of degrees, I agree with the doctors as he is still under observation and having a walk without the accompaniment of professions could be unsafe as accidents could happen anytime since he has not interaction with people for several years. However, I disagree with the doctors’ ways in treating him as a “dangerous” subject rather than a human-being. They should at least discuss and make agreement with him by allowing him walking outside with someone following him from far. This way would be much appropriate than they strictly reject his request and isolate him from his friends after he shows uncontrollable madness due to the side-effects of the drugs. The action of isolating him also displays people’s cruelty to eliminate perceiving harms when they find out someone could endanger their lives. Everyone in this world should be treated equally. We should not see patients as burdens and look down on them, but in fact, we should provide more cares and respects in order for them to feel that they are as similar as us. 

            “Awakenings” is a very interesting life-affirming movie as it portrays the idea that life does not always have a happy-ending. People in this world will experience difficulties and the unfortunate one will not be able to overcome the obstacles. Life is short and we cannot predict what will happen in the future. To prevent any regrets, we should cherish what we owned and be active in our lives. Besides, this movie displays another part of the world: the life of patients who have been diagnosed with psychological diseases. Some of them lose consciousness and need to spend the rest of their lives staying at the medical hospital, with the visitation of the family members in some periods of time. Some of them who are marked as “dangerous” will be “imprisoned” and guarded in their rooms. All of them are not allowed to interact with the outside world unless they have recovered. These scenes bring me to mind of the prisoners, who are also being locked and wishing for the visitation from the love ones. However, these patients have done nothing wrong but suffered with the diseases. People spend too less patience and empathy on them, but treat them as “highly-danger” creatures. Hopefully this movie could create awareness among people to change their negative mind-set about mind illness patients and provide more care and tolerance towards them.

Cinema Paradiso (Nuovo Cinema Paradiso)

 

              Many of us would claim ourselves as “movie lovers”, where we enjoy spending time having movie marathon alone or with friends, watching movies for few hours without showing any sense of exhaustion. Some of us would even show up in cinema during every weekend, just to have a relaxing time enjoying the latest movie. However, do we ever question ourselves, how much and deep do we love movies? Are we willing to make it as a dream or career that becomes an important part of our lives, or just an interesting activity that carried out during leisure time?

“Cinema Paradiso” is a 1988 Italian movie that portrays the life of a true movie lover, named Salvatore di Vita (nickname: Toto). Using flashback technique, this movie displays the love and passion of a young man towards movies since his childhood, which shaped him to become a successful movie director in future. The movie started with Toto receiving the passing away news of his friend, Alfredo. Feeling shocked and grieved, he reminisced about his life in his born place, a village named Giancaldo in Sicily. In this small village, he learnt about his love for movies and also got to know one of the most important person in his life, Alfredo.

Toto and Alfredo knew each other in a local theatre named Cinema Paradiso. Their relationship is quite complicated, yet warm and touching. They were like friends, teacher and student, and father and son. Alfredo offered warm and cares towards Toto when he was punished by his mother because of his passion towards movies. He taught Toto the skills in film-projecting and also shared with him his life-learning knowledge. Toto would tell Alfredo about his love problems and take good care of him after he was blind because of a fire in cinema. Although it is quite cruel for Toto when Alfredo urged him to leave the village to pursue his dream and promised that he would never look back and come back to the village even with successful results, I can see the love of a father and teacher who wishes his son and student to do well in future and how hard he is to make that decision to push away his precious kid just to let him grows. The most touching part of the movie is the last scene, where Toto realized that the gift that Alfredo left to him before he passed away was actually all the snipped kissing scenes that he asked when he was a kid. Making these scenes into a movie, Alfredo wanted to remind Toto to feel love again even though he was heart-broken in his first relationship. From these, I learn that love could beyond blood-line.

            “Cinema Paradiso” is a very interesting and meaningful movie as it reveals the real life of village people after World-War II. War brings a lot of harm. It takes away plenty of innocent lives and destroys the hope of many families. It turns Toto’s mother into a widow and Toto and his sister into children who lost their father. Although Alfredo sometimes played the role of father in Toto’s life, it could not be denied that Toto still lost his real father in his early childhood, which would affect his life development. Besides, from the movie, I could see how narrow-minded and bias some villagers are towards different culture and believes. It was shown in the movie where a family was being discriminated and left the village because they are communists. Children were even being taught not to be friend with them by their parents. Adults would discriminate communists in the workplace without any reasons just because of their identity. Furthermore, a “high status” man who sat at the upper level in the cinema would spit towards the crowd sitting at the lower floor who he thought were lower classes than him to show his discrimination. All these scenes had shown people in these period of time were lack of tolerance towards people who are different from them, which I do not agree as we should treat everyone in this world equally without prejudice and discrimination.

            I was being inspired after watching this movie as it shows the real life of a person in pursuing his dream. Although Toto experienced lots of happiness and sadness in his childhood and adolescence, he did not give up but still passionate and determined enough to make his dream comes true, which is to become a successful movie producer. Life is full of ups and downs. It is our determination and believes that make us strong enough to withstand the pressures and pass through all the life obstacles successfully.