AWAKENINGS (1990)

DRAMATISATION of Sacks’ famous memoir, this film depicts the ground-breaking events that took place at a Bronx hospital in 1969, when he decided to administer the drug L-Dopa—commonly used to treat Parkinson’s—to. The initial results were astounding; the patients, who’d spent decades unable to talk or move, suddenly erupted into fullblown life. Reactions varied: for some, it was a fairytale-like return; for others, awakening to a world and bodies they no longer recognised as their own was a nightmarish experience, with one patient saying L-Dopa should be renamed “Hell-Dopa”.