Oliver Sacks: His Own Life

Last month, NBC premiered its new medical drama, Brilliant Minds, starring Zachary Quinto as Dr. Oliver Wolf. The premise is intriguing: a motorcycle-riding neurologist, who’s as unorthodox as he is skilled, treats a wide array of patients with neurological conditions most people can’t even fathom. Between cases, we glimpse into Wolf’s troubled past and his own neurodivergence to paint a complete picture of a man who’s revolutionizing his field. Believe it or not, this premise is not the brainchild of a screenwriter, but based on the life and work of the beloved real-life neurologist and bestselling author: Dr. Oliver [Wolf] Sacks...Kino Film Collection is proud to be home to the documentary Oliver Sacks: His Own Life by Ric Burns, which chronicles the celebrated neurologist’s life through his own words.

The Oliver Sacks that most of the world knew — the one I fell in love with after we met in 2008, when he was 75 — was the beloved neurologist and the author of many best-selling books, admired worldwide. A forthcoming volume of Oliver’s letters, nearly 350 of them, spanning 55 years, from age 27 to 82, provides a more complicated picture of the man often referred to in his later years as “the poet laureate of medicine.” 

Through exclusive interviews with Sacks’s friends, colleagues and peers (including Jonathan Miller), as well as archive footage, the film is an eye-opening celebration of the life and work of this extraordinary scientist and man.

The genius of neurologist Oliver Sacks was founded on his huge empathy for his patients. Yet, for years, he struggled to come to terms with himself.
 

There are no remarkable innovations in this documentary on a much-missed literary and scientific original. Oliver Sacks, the neurologist who gained wider fame with books such as Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, talks fluently and hilariously some months before his death in 2015.

The late British neurologist and writer gets a positively glowing bio-documentary, chronicling his troubled childhood, his struggles with his homosexuality and drug addiction, and his pioneering research into autism and neurodiversity. That’s a lot to tackle, and the film just skims the surface of its subject, but it’s brightened by Sacks’s own irresistible presence.

This documentary about the famed neurologist and author is one of the loveliest and most thought-provoking films of 2021.

Our editor Jon Sutton watches 'Oliver Sacks: His Own Life', directed by Ric Burns and released on Altitude Films.

Interview with Ric Burns and Bill Hayes (starts at 1:05:45).

Yet one of the indelible lessons of Ric Burns’s remarkable new documentary, shot in the final months of Sacks’s life, was just how tempestuous his inner life had been. He let slip some of his secrets in his autobiography, On the Move, which was published soon after his death, but Burns’s film, full of humour and pathos, provides further insights.

Take your pick of extraordinary moments in this excellent documentary about the neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks. In 2015, aged 82, knowing he had months to live, Sacks sat down at home in New York and talked to the camera with great honesty.

Interview with Ric Burns and Bill Hayes (starts at 1:43:41).

It’s well worth tracking down one of the September 29 special cinema screenings of Ric Burns' lovingly made documentary portrait of the writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, or seeking it out online.

When we first meet Sacks in Burns’s film, we find a charismatic man full of life, warmth and humour. He does not seem like a man facing a devastating diagnosis. However, time is running out and you sense that Sacks still has a lot more to say.

Oliver Sacks: His Own Life is in UK & Irish cinemas for a One Night Only special event on 29 September.

In Oliver Sacks: His Own Life, director Ric Burns uses a blend of archival and exclusive footage to illustrate the journey of a man who, until the end, explored and valued the lives of his patients beyond their symptoms.

PBS has produced a radiant documentary, directed by Ric Burns, that shows how Sacks embodies what Sir William Osler said, over a century ago: “It is the good physician that treats the disease. It is the great physician who treats the patient with the disease.” No wonder Sacks was so beloved.

This past week, a documentary on Sacks premiered on the PBS “American Masters” series...Sacks did as much as anyone to introduce autism to a general audience in the United States...

In the PBS presentation, documentary filmmaker Ric Burns chronicles Sacks’ storied career as well as his long struggle with his sexuality.

A new documentary takes a painstakingly intimate look at the famously private British writer and neurologist, who died in 2015

The innovative wordsmith's time spent in and outside of the world of neurological studies is captured in this portrait of both his breakthroughs and insecurities.

The physician and author, subject of a new PBS documentary airing this week, was a contributor to The New York Review for over three decades.

This week, it just so happens that the Burnses are having back-to-back premieres on PBS, with Ken debuting an expansive three-part docuseries on Ernest Hemingway, which he directed with longtime creative partner Lynn Novick, and Ric screening Oliver Sacks: His Own Life about the famed writer and neurologist.

Oliver Sacks: His Own life premiering on PBS on Friday, April 9

Oliver Sacks: His Own Life packs an emotional punch

Variety's Clayton Davis predicts that OLIVER SACKS: HIS OWN LIFE will be a contender for a feature doc Oscar nomination.

HHMI Tangled Bank Studios is a rarity in the film world — a nonprofit boutique film studio housed within the internationally recognized Howard Hughes Medical Institute, one of the largest private, nonprofit science philanthropies in the U.S. dedicated to advancing scientific research and science education.

Burns’s documentary, made shortly before Sacks’s death from cancer in 2015, traces the blossoming of a brilliant but troubled outsider as he elevated patient case histories to a literary art form by ceaselessly posing the same question: What is it like to be you?

Ric Burns' Oliver Sacks: His Own Life (Zeitgeist) documents a world-famous neurologist who was given a death sentence — inoperable cancer — and used his remaining time to reflect on his complicated life and the wonder of the world.

Ric Burns, director of the film Oliver Sacks: His Own Life, joins Ira to talk about the life and legacy of Oliver Sacks.

“Oliver Sacks: His Own Life,” Ric Burns’ majestic documentary, covers all eight decades of the unconventional physician’s life but is rooted in the final months before his death of cancer in 2015 at the age of 82.

The documentary’s chief virtue, after the very considerable pleasure of getting to spend time in Sacks’s company, is learning how much his personal life rivaled his career in remarkableness.

“His Own Life” is a compassionate, endlessly fascinating testament to that, as well as to the assertion, by one of Sacks’s friends, that the man’s placid acceptance of mortality offered a “master class in dying.” 

Neurologist Oliver Sacks devoted his life to treating people with cognitive disorders, often severe ones, and writing eloquently about them in books such as Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. But few knew of the difficulties the kindly, erudite doctor and scientist faced in his own life.

A new documentary explores the fascinating and sometimes troubled life of the famed neurologist.

Ric Burns’s “Oliver Sacks: His Own Life” premiered in Telluride in 2019 in advance of a 2020 release by Zeitgeist Films in association with Kino Lorber. It takes an intimate look at the legendary British neurologist and storyteller who inspired the 1973 film “Awakenings.”

A new documentary, Oliver Sacks: His Own Life, chronicles the late neurologist's efforts to understand perception, memory and consciousness. Sacks spoke to Fresh Air in 2012.

"I’m an inveterate storyteller,” confesses the celebrated neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks at the start of Oliver Sacks: His Own Life.

Premiering on virtual cinema platforms on Sept. 23, “Oliver Sacks: His Own Life” profiles the legendary gay neurologist and storyteller as he looks back on his decades-long battles with depression, homophobia and a hostile medical profession.

[Oliver Sacks'] wild, unlikely life shed fascinating new light on the human mind, and so will this film.

The film tells the story of how Sacks came into his own in his work—an outsider who ultimately influenced a generation of scientists.

Oliver Sacks: His Own Life explores the life and work of the legendary neurologist and storyteller, as he shares intimate details of his battles with drug addiction, homophobia, and a medical establishment that accepted his work only decades after the fact.

Burns explores Sacks’ life and work as the renowned thinker shares details of his battles with drug addiction, homophobia, and a medical establishment that accepted his work only decades after the fact.

Oliver Sacks: His Own Life closely follows the autobiography that Sacks published shortly before his death in 2015. Burns conducted several interviews with Sacks in the months before his death, and he also included interviews with celebrated writers, physicians, friends and family members.

Director Ric Burns documented Sacks' final months for Oliver Sacks: His Own Life

A portrait of the poetic neurologist of 'Awakenings,' shot at the end of his life, takes a tender and thrilling look at the sacred demons that drove him.

Sacks has been featured in films before, but this is the first documentary about his entire life. It covers his writing and medical career, but also his traumatic early-life experiences, rejections from the scientific community, his struggles with his homosexuality, and his preternatural ability for compassion and empathy towards people with a wide range of neurological disorders.

Burns’s documentary is a fitting and moving tribute to a man who never stopped wondering what it was like to be in the head of another sentient being.