Hollywood Versifier: The Panther

I can count on one hand the number of movies I've seen based on poems. (For the record, it's "Eugene Onegin," "The Man from Snowy River," and very loosely, "The Raven.") I'm not counting epics because for the purpose of the film they're just narrative stories that happen to be in verse, so there's no "Beowulf," "O Brother Where Art Thou" or "Troy" in my list.


But there are a ton of great moments of poetry in film, and here's one that introduced me to one of my literary heroes. The film is "Awakenings," which is the precursor to "Patch Adams" with Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, but before they were replaced by talentless hack imposters.


The film is based on a true story of a revolutionary treatment for encephalitis patients which brought them out of a catatonic state for long periods of lucidity. But as their bodies became inured to the chemicals used to treat them, they eventually relapsed into their previous states.





The scene in the movie is a wonderful tone poem, very understated, back when Robin Williams could rip your heart out with just a quiet look and didn't need to yell or chew the scenery. (Although to be fair, they did coat the trailer in "RV" with a honey glaze.)


Here's one of the many, many translations of the poem.

The Panther

Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Stephen Mitchell

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world.


As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.


Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tense, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.