Recently I have seen a movie with my classmates titled “Patch Adams”. It tells the story of Hunter Patch Adams, a doctor who revolutionised the way people with mental illness are cured.

The role is played by Robin Williams, an extraordinary actor.

The movie begins with Patch going to a psychiatric hospital to get treatment after an attempted suicide.

Obviously he is fully conscious of his actions and he is not crazy.

Patch is nearly a middle-aged man and he didn’t do much in his life, but he still has a dream, he wants to help people in need, that is to say he wants to become a doctor.

While being in the hospital  he sees how people are treated by the doctors. There are crazy people, people with disabilities, old people and they are seen as crazy people that need to get treated as animals, but Patch sees them as  they are,  human beings.  He starts to play with them, he befriends them and soon he realizes that he wants to be a different kind of doctor because  he  doesn’t  view  patients as objects who need to be fixed.

Two years later Patch enters college, the other students look at him in a perplexed way because of his  age and his strange behaviour.

Even  though most of the students stay away from him, he still manages to make a friend and he even meets a girl, named Corinne; at first she keeps him at a distance.

Patch wants to work and study in the college hospital, but he needs to be in the third year of studies, as a result he dresses up as a fake doctor and he starts to help patients. By dressing as a clown he makes kids with cancer have fun, he plays with old people, so that they can forget their miserable conditions. In truth, the most introverted patients start to open up thanks to Patch.

One day, unfortunately, he gets caught by the hospital director and gets almost expelled.

He starts to get very close to Corinne and one day they even kiss; Patch learns that Corinne’s dad is very rich and that he owns a big piece of land, and that he would like to give it to Patch and his friends, so that they could build their own small hospital, and they do it.

Lots of people go there and they get treated with smiles and affection.

Everything goes well until one day Corinne disappears. Patch is eventually informed of the tragic event, she is dead, killed by one of their patients.

Patch hits rock bottom, he blames himself  for her death.  In a disastrous moment he tries to jump off a cliff, but he hesitates   -   on the last second a butterfly lands  on his shoulder. He knows Corinne will always be with him.

In the end he graduates and at the ceremony there are all the people he had ever helped.

Just thinking about the role Robin Williams played in this movie and how he ended his life, even while seeming always joyful, sends shivers down my spine and I feel a bit sad, because I really appreciated him as an  actor. 

Riccardi Augusto, 3^C Linguistico