Awakenings

It's an amazing movie!!!! The movie is based off a true account also entitled "Awakenings." It is about a doctor who uses a new drug on his immobile patients so they can "awaken." All the patients have been asleep for 20-30 years where they were in a catatonic state. They would not move or talk. However, Dr. Sayer (Robin Williams) gets help from the nurses to perform some research on the patients to try to get them to move. There is a scene in the movie where he places all the patients facing each other and gets them to play catch and another where a woman starts to eat when listening to a certain type of music.

Leonard (Robert de Niro), a patient who has been immobile since he was a boy, wakes up with the experimental drug treatment. He and Dr. Sayer form an amazing kind of friendship. It crosses the boundary of assumption that patients should be treated like "statue" and "furniture" just because they hadn't moved in many years. There should be a huge applause for both of these actors. Because of them, I was crying the whole last half of the movie. The most powerful scene is that climax where Leonard discovers that even though he's been given the gift of life again, he will not ever be treated like every other human being.

Lol, afterwards, I wiki'd Encephalitis and tried to look for any remaining patients. I TOTALLY WANT TO READ THE BOOK.