He played a doctor who gave frozen patients their lives back — and Robin Williams made Awakenings a story about wonder, patience and heartbreak.
Released in 1990, Awakenings, based on Oliver Sacks’s book, stars Williams as Dr Malcolm Sayer, a physician working with patients who have been in a catatonic state for decades. When a new drug briefly wakes them, Sayer watches, with joy and dread, as they rediscover the world.
Williams is quieter here than audiences expected, and that restraint is the point. He plays a man who listens, who cares deeply and who cannot save everyone he awakens. His scenes with Robert De Niro, as patient Leonard Lowe, are tender without sentimentality.
It is a signature role because it proved Williams could lead a drama without a single comic set-piece, and still hold an audience completely.