ABSTRACT
The book's title derives from a particular period – the summer months of 1969 – when, under the influence of a drug treatment initiated by Oliver Sacks, the patients seemed to awaken from their years of sleeping sickness, and recovered something approaching a normal 'healthy' state. The appearance of the book was soon followed by a 45-minute-long documentary made for UK television, also called Awakenings. At 121 minutes, the film is substantially longer than either the TV documentary or the play. Oliver Sacks' title was inspired by that of an Ibsen play, and in 1982 the story was reclaimed by the theatre via a work by Harold Pinter. The film version of Awakenings had apparently been languishing in development limbo until it was seized upon by Penny Marshall, who produced and directed the film. And yet the film of Awakenings conveys many points that are present in Sacks' original book very effectively, precisely because it contextualises those points slightly differently.
