Time to go?

Awakening (1990)

Director: Penny Marshall

In this film, we see Robin Williams portraying his Patch Adams character. To be honest, he adopted the Patch Adams role much later, specifically in 1998. Here, Williams plays the part of a doctor, Dr Malcolm Sawyer, who has social anxiety and works at a hospital with patients suffering from chronic illnesses, predominantly post-encephalitis cases. It is based on a true story that took place in a Bronx hospital during the summer of 1969. 

He develops a keen interest in a man, Leonard Lowe (Robert De Niro), who had been in a catatonic state for 30 years following a brain infection. Dr Sawyer uses a newly discovered drug, L-DOPA, originally used for Parkinson's disease, to try it on his patients. He achieves remarkable results. All the post-encephalitis patients—those who contracted the illness during the 1930s epidemic—in that centre recover, striving hard to adapt to the chaotic world of the late 1960s.

Soon, the effects of the medicine fade, and the patients slip back into their previous dull states. The core of the story revolves around Leonard, who, having arrested development at about eight years old, is thrust into a life thirty years ahead, akin to being tossed into the deep end of the pool without floaters. Before he can settle into his new life, it is time to go.

The story is an allegory of life itself, suggesting belief in rebirths. One is thrust into this birth, essentially with a clean slate. As the ancient Greeks believed, as mentioned in Plato's Republic, the souls of the dead must drink from the River Lethe to forget the memories of their previous births. The process of birth is a process of re-learning knowledge, in other words, re'mind'ing ourselves about life on Earth. 

Similarly, the characters in the film, who recover from the stupor of the unknown realm, are given a chance to live life. Before they become comfortable in their role, the opportunity is unceremoniously taken away. Such is life. One has a whole lifetime to learn how to live. When they are at their most vigorous, they lack the wisdom. When wisdom arrives, the body loses its vigour to fight. This recurring cycle of forgetting and re-learning is an exercise in futility. If the karmic cycle is meant to punish past shortcomings, where will learning from and correcting previous mistakes take effect if memory is wiped clean? Only a select few souls are given the choice to draw from Mnemosyne (the River of Memory) to recall past life experiences and thus reach the end of the transmigration journey more swiftly. 

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