Awakenings (1990) is a powerful medical drama film directed by Penny Marshall, based on the memoir by neurologist Oliver Sacks. The story follows Dr. Malcolm Sayer (played by Robin Williams), a shy and compassionate physician working in a Bronx hospital in 1969. He discovers that many of his patients, who have been catatonic for decades due to an encephalitis epidemic in the 1920s, might not be completely unreachable. Through his research, he begins experimenting with the drug L-Dopa, which was