Awake is a film directed by Joby Harold in 2007, stars Hayden Christensen, Jessica Alba, Terrence Howard, and Lena Olin.

I would say that the story is just another good movie. But morals we get from it, is extremely deep and against quite the popular belief.

The story:

Hayden is a rich young businessman who inherited a massive company from his late father. He is very well known for his wealth and how his company saves a lot of people. He lives only with his mother, Lena, whom their relation is not quite well and in fact this mother seems to be antagonized in this part of story. He however has this heart problem which is very rare, and would later on need surgery.

Jessica Alba was his Lena’s new personal assistant. Hayden ended up falling in love with her and then they had a backstreet relationship, because his mother would never have approved of it. Eventually they came out to Lena, with such a negative reaction as predicted. And they insisted on getting married.

Terrence was Hayden’s best friend who was a surgeon. Apparently he is facing quite a number of malpractice suits against him. However, due to friendship Hayden who needed heart transplantation insisted that he wanted Terrence’s team to do the surgery instead of the best surgeon in USA which was Lena’s friend. Naturally, Lena was highly against Hayden’s decision on using Terrence. But Hayden was not new to conflicts with his mother. It has happened all the time, and this is just another one.

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The story climaxed when Hayden was in the surgery room. Jessica Alba was waiting outside with Lena. Hayden apparently experienced this rare phenomenon in which although he is under deep sleep of anesthetics, his soul was somehow awake so he could feel and hear all of the surgery process and even move back in time and back again to present as much as he wishes.

This is when he found out that Terrence, his best friend, and Jessica, his supposed true love; along with some other members of the surgeon team had conspired to kill Hayden. They were apparently in the same surgeon team which had to pay a great deal of money due to malpractice suits. Jessica had to approach him and make him love her and end up married so that after Hayden dies, a lot of money will be inherited to her as widow so that they can pay the law suits. And Terrence with the surgeon team’s job was to ensure that Hayden dies during surgery. And it shouldn’t be known as a deliberate malpractice. There was a non-conspirator in the team, but then the conspirator team was sly enough to let things out of this person’s notice. The plan was to make the donor heart fail by injecting certain substances. The plan only worked well until the doctors have pulled out Hayden’s failure heart, put Hayden on a life support machine, ‘found out’ that the donor heart ‘failed’, and told the bad news to his mother.

However, Lena had a very bad feeling about this while the surgery was undergone. And somehow found out that Jessica was a scam. When the surgeon team announced that the donor heart had failed, Hayden is only living by life support machine, and asking permission to pull out the cable, Lena ran off to the canteen. She called her friend who was the best surgeon to gather a team a.s.a.p. and get to that place with the police too, and committed suicide by overdosing herself.

This team came and overtook the surgery using Lena’s heart as donor, while Terrence’s team was trying to run away from the police but weren’t fast enough. Terrence, however, felt guilty and did not attempt to escape. And at the same time, he secured the only evidence that would link Jessica to the crime so that she cannot escape.

So in the end, all perpetrators were brought to justice and Hayden was saved by his mother’s sacrifice.

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Well, that was more or less the general outline of the story which does not include details and dramatization.

But the moral of this story is very touching. It is very deep, and quite against the popular trend at the moment.

Most films these days, always describe true love as something that is so eternal, honest and pure. It may have problems here and there, but in the end it is always perfect in its own way. Many antagonist characters are even known as those who do not believe in love.

They also picture friendship as something which is of high value where friends are those who would always be there for you, loyal and would do anything for you. Many even argue that it is higher than romantic love. And after love, friendship is also a quality that many antagonist characters do not value.
But when it comes to inter-generation relation, many films show how there is always a clash between the old and young generation. They show how the parents, though care, but have different ways of seeing things with the new generation. And conclusions of these films are that the youth will always win. They highly appreciate the old generation, but they also want to make their own decisions because it is their life. They know what is best for them. And these old people, will end up realizing how it is time to let their children go, because now they are mature and can decide for themselves.

There are countless films which follow the types above. But what Awake offers is very different.

This film shows that you cannot guarantee that your true love and true friends are as true as you imagined them to be. You may believe in them as much as you want, even more than you believe in God for rhetoric sake. You may have complete confidence based on many experiences and knowledge you have. Maybe they all make sense. But still, you cannot be 100% sure.

In Awake, despite all the malpractice suits, Hayden still trusts Terrence to do his heart surgery. He couldn’t even imagine that Terrence would make mistakes in the surgery procedures for him, because he is Hayden’s best friend. And moreover, to actually conspire in killing. Unthinkable. But yet, it happened.

Hayden actually fell in love with Jessica. His mothers disagreement matters not, because he is used to have conflicts with her. They even got married. Did it ever occur to him, even for a second, that Jessica was fake all this time? It didn’t. He found out, but when it was late.

But his mother, above all hatred and conflicts, ended up sacrificing herself. She was protecting him all this time. They were all bad feelings, senseless, and illogical. Well, except for Terrence’s case where I’m pretty sure I will never let my child undergo surgery by anyone who has faced a malpractice suit before.

Our mothers, and fathers, part of the old generation. They have their own standards of truth. They were brought up in probably very different circumstances as we were. Different experiences create much different feelings and solutions towards problems, albeit similar problems.
This is what makes us very prone to conflicts with our parents. Not to mention, when we hit the age of preteen and senses start to come up to us, everything our parents want seem to be wrong to our eyes.

They might be wrong, however. They might even be OFTENLY wrong. Much more experienced, but they are also humans, which are imperfect, and erroneous. This was never the idea of the story.

The moral of the story, is the intent. As much as your parents are wrong, imperfect, maybe stupid to some extent, but they have no other motive. They love you, unconditional. This one, you can rely on. This one, is guaranteed. This one, has no question.

Homo homini lupus may be true. But even the most savage lion will protect its cubs to death if it must.

So when it is a question of purest trust, and whitest motives. When it is a test on whether unconditional love actually exists. There is only one place to turn to.