Awake

Movie Recommendation: Awake (2007)
[Warning: Spoilers]

So I just finished watching 'Awake', a movie with Hayden Christensen and Jessica Alba. It's about people who are well, awake even after they've been administered anesthesia. They just lie there paralyzed, but are completely aware of everything that's going on around them.

The horror.

I must say, the movie's really good. I actually rushed here when it was done, cause I wanted to give it a review while it was still fresh in my mind.

I loved it! Absolutely loved it!

The main character is a wealthy businessman named Clay Beresford, played by Hayden Christensen.

At the beginning though, I didn't quite get where the movie was headed. It started out with Hayden Christensen submerged in a bathtub. A bathtub! But now I find that I appreciate that. It's not one of those movies that just plop the whole story right down on your lap, like "here you go, this man is a billionaire and this is his mother and blahblahblah." No, this movie makes you feel like it took a slice out of the main character's life and presented it to you. It makes it easier to associate yourself with the main character, cause you're by his side while you try to find out what's going on.

Clay has a fiancée, Sam Lockwood, played by Jessica Alba.

They're happily in love, and they've been engaged for about a year. But Sam is unhappy with Clay because they have to hide their relationship from Clay's mom, Lilith, played by some brilliant actress I sadly have not seen before. But IMDB says her name is Lena Olin.

At first I found myself cheering for the young couple and booing the mother. Why can't she just let them be happy?

Clay has a friend - a surgeon. His name is Jack Harper.

Later on I found out that Clay actually has a heart condition, and might die soon if he doesn't get a heart transplant.

Clay wants Jack to operate on him, but his mom Lilith has other ideas. She repeatedly urges him to let her friend, a very famous surgeon who has operated on presidents, do the procedure.

This continuous nagging by her only increased my support for Clay and my dislike for the mother. Why can't she just let him make his own decisions? He's not a child. He's a grown-up, perfectly capable of steering his own life.

And so Clay, in a fit of adolescent rebelliousness, completely disobeys his mom. He marries Sam in the middle of the night, and then decides to have surgery right after that.

And this is when things start to go wrong.

[At this point though, I found myself starting to nitpick the tiny errors in the movie... as I do when I'm bored. "Why are they entering the OR unsterilized??", "Hey! She's not clean - why is she in there??", "Why are they doing that?", "Aren't they supposed to do this thing first before that?"]

Clay is at the operating table, and everything seems to be going right according to plan. Except that there was a new doctor in charge of anesthesia, and I found myself disliking the guy. He was drunk; and he may have administered the anesthetic improperly because Clay was still awake! I couldn't watch what was going on because they were actually SLICING HIM OPEN and he could feel EVERYTHING!

I thought that that was the highlight of the movie. He would feel the pain-- ooh the PAIN! - then wake up, be mad at his friend, the doctor, and then he and Sam would live happily ever after.

But ohh, how wrong I was.

Clay had a near-death experience. His ghost self started running around the hospital, trying to find a way to alert the doctors to the fact that HE WAS AWAKE. He tried and failed several times, until a glimmer of hope appeared.

His now-wife, Sam, went to check on his condition, and he was all over her screaming that something was wrong, that he was in a lot of pain.

And here is where the tables are violently turned, where everything I thought was right turned out to be wrong; where people I thought to be good turned out to be the opposite. [I find that happening a LOT lately...]

It turns out that everything was a lie. His friend that doctor was actually a part of a plot to kill him and take his money. And Sam was a part of it.

So he's there, his ghost self, wandering glumly everywhere - in the hospital halls, in his memories - only now noticing the signs present everywhere, only now realizing that he had been a fool, a pawn in a stupid game.

And I felt really sorry for him... you just have to feel for the guy. I can only imagine what must have been going through his head. His happiness turned out to be a lie, he should have listened to his mother, his friend was not really a friend but a traitor... and now he was going to die, and leave behind an empty life.

[At this point I was like, "Are there no psychics in this hospital?? Cause that would make things a lot easier. He would just have to wave at them."]

I must mention that I particularly loved this part of the movie. Clay, resigned to his fate, began wandering the streets back to his house, and as he walked by the lights, they went out, one by one. It was brilliant! It gave me a wonderful chilly feeling, because it was such a powerful, powerful symbol of a life ending soon. It adds to the feeling of despair that's already there.

Meanwhile, in the world of the living, his mother was grieving, of course. The conspirators were all celebrating silently, and I was wondering whether it was going to end there.

Then it's back to Clay. He was on his bed, preparing to sleep. I was like "NO! Don't go to bed! Fight! Come on!", and then the lamp went out. I thought that was it, until his mother suddenly appeared. He asked her what she was doing there, to which she replied, "Well I wasn't going to stay behind without you."

A mother's love. I still maintain that it's one of the, if not THE most beautiful form of love on this earth.

His mother had taken an overdose. To be with him.

Laziness is gnawing at my head, so I won't go into a lot of detail over what happens next. Besides, it's the climax, so even though I've already thoroughly spoiled you, I'll let you watch what happens for yourself.

But I really loved the one part before the end. Lilith was explaining something to Clay, and he just stood there, watching the scene unfold before him. It was then he understood that he had to go back, but if he did, he would never see her again.

A heartbreaking scene. Someone had to stay behind. One had to live, the other had to die.

I'm still relishing the beautiful pain brought on by that movie.

It was really beautiful. Very artsy, but in a good way. Watch it and keep an eye out for the scene I was raving about, because it really is breathtakingly good.

So now I'm off. Ciao!