Penny Marshall is perhaps still best known as a sitcom actress, but her contributions to cinema have had far more impact over the years. She directed mostly gentle feel-good comedies and heartfelt dramas, but through them launched several major stars to fame, including Tom Hanks with "Big" and Whoopi Goldberg with "Jumpin' Jack Flash." She made the kind of midbudget, star vehicle comedies that haven't gotten much traction at the box office lately, and I've been feeling nostalgic for them. However, her best film was a medical drama, "Awakenings," which represented a rare confluence of several talented players.
I saw "Awakenings" for the first time when I was very young and didn't recognize most of the actors. It didn't strike me as odd that Robin Williams was in a serious role or that Robert DeNiro was playing a very sweet man who wouldn't hurt a fly. All I knew was that both performances were wonderful, and the script, the second screen credit of Steven Zaillian, was very moving and maybe even profound. The film is a lovely mix of comedy and drama, and presents a very humanist, life-affirming story about the wonder of human existence. "Awakenings" has superficial similarities to much darker narratives like "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Flowers for Algernon," but keeps its attitude positive without ever coming across as too maudlin or melodramatic.
It helps that the film's visuals are so strong. Marshall never got much attention as a visual stylist, keeping her filmmaking very simple to let the talent of her actors shine. However, she had a knack for orchestrating some iconic visuals, like the FAO Schwartz piano scene in "Big" and Whoopi Goldberg stuck in that telephone booth in "Jumpin' Jack Flash." Her cinematographer on "Awakenings," and for many of her subsequent films, was the celebrated Miroslav Ondricek, who shot many of Milos Forman's best films. Early on, there's a sequence where Williams as Dr. Sayers demonstrates how a seemingly catatonic patient still has reflex responses by having them catch a baseball. His theories are dismissed by the other doctors, but Sayers will not give up. Soon baseballs and tennis balls are being lobbed everywhere, becoming the film's visual metaphor for Sayers' determination. Patients are wheeled down the halls with them clutched in their frozen hands. After seeing "Awakenings," I couldn't remember the title, the actors, or the name of the disease they were trying to cure, but I always remembered the tennis balls.
"Awakenings" received plenty of acclaim when it was released, and the lion's share went to Robert DeNiro for his work as Leonard Lowe, a man who contracted encephalitis lethargica as a boy, and had been in a catatonic state for thirty years. His awakening to a new reality as an adult, and his transformation from a voiceless vegetable to vibrant personality, are the impetus for a voyage of discovery. Leonard is one of DeNiro's most charming and lovable characters, initially a boy who has suddenly found himself in a man's body, but who grows up quickly, falls in love, and eventually becomes a tragic figure. Robin Williams' Dr. Sayers takes a backseat as the film goes on, but he's plenty compelling in his clashes with the medical establishment, and finding his own personal victories. I like him far more here than in most of his other dramatic roles.
It doesn't surprise me at all that Marshall eventually stopped making movies, and spent the last years of her career directing television shows like "United States of Tara." The slower, character-based films she was best known for have largely gone out of fashion. I think you could still make a film like "Awakenings" today, but it's a far less likely project than it would have been in 1990. This is an adult drama that takes a more thoughtful and uplifting approach to its medical mystery subject matter than most, and is difficult to categorize. It's not funny enough to be a comedy, not tragic enough to be a tearjerker, and far too complicated to be a feel-good film. However, it is a film that I still think about after thirty years, and continue to hold in very high regard.
What I've Seen - Penny Marshall
Jumpin' Jack Flash (1986)
Big (1988)
Awakenings (1990)
A League of Their Own (1992)
Renaissance Man (1994)
The Preacher's Wife (1996)
---
No comments:
Post a Comment