A REVIEW OF "ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST" A RETRO REVIEW, 1975 by Ryan Ellis
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(NOTE-This is the 3rd of 5 retro reviews honouring great Jack Nicholson films I plan to do in the next few weeks. "Chinatown" & "A Few Good Men" are already posted on the Internet.)
What is crazy? "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" made a bold statement addressing insanity. It took a little over two hours to introduce its characters, set up a plot, and then let these great actors work with a top-notch screenplay. After their job was done and this film broke into theatres, we knew more about mental hospitals, so-called "crazy" people, and how one man can change the lives of others around him than we had known before. Watching this great film nearly 30 years later reveals much, much more than just Jack Nicholson playing a volatile free-spirit and collecting an Oscar for it. There are more underlying themes and ideas in this film than you can shake a big stick at. I'll get to all those fascinating subtexts in a moment, but first, a little about the story, if you please...
It's 1963 (according to a radio broadcast of the World Series) and R.P. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) has been relocated from the local penitentiary to the state mental hospital. He's a known malcontent serving out a jail sentence for statuatory rape of a minor. Sent to the hospital for evaluation, the prison authorities think that McMurphy has been faking insanity to get out of work. He has an immediate impact on his fellow patients by taking their money in numerous bets and disrupting regular ward behaviour. McMurphy deliberately tries to anger Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) and even wagers with the other patients that he can, essentially, make HER crazy. The icy-cold nurse doesn't crack, but proves that her single goal in the hospital is to make her patients crack. McMurphy brings out the rebelliousness in everyone--little knowing most of them have nothing to lose because they're voluntary patients--and pushes Nurse Ratched to take drastic measures to bring him in line.
"One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" has a limited musical score. The music in this film nicely complements the story, yet never interferes with the steady stream of superb dialogue. This is not a big technical film, but Forman used sound and lighting well considering that he had a confined area and so many actors to photograph on film. This picture didn't win any technical awards, but no one was crying about that on Oscar Night. It was the second of three movies--"It Happened One Night" and "The Silence Of The Lambs" are the others--to win the Top 5 Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best (Adapted) Screenplay.
Nicholson and Fletcher won Best Actor and Best Actress Oscars for their fine work, but the supporting cast was equally good. William Redfield plays Dale Harding, an intelligent man who cannot handle his wife's beauty and suspects that she's cheating on him. Billy Bibbit (Brad Dourif in an Oscar-nominated performance) is a young man with a tremendous lack of confidence and a terrible stutter brought on by his mother's overprotectiveness. Chief Bromden (Will Sampson) is thought to be a deaf and dumb Indian until we learn that he has his own demons which only McMurphy's influence can help him overcome. Christopher Lloyd--in his underrated film debut--plays Taber, one of the few committed patients on the ward and the one guy who knows that everyone is full of it (I had to edit that last word by six letters!). Danny DeVito, Sydney Lassick, and Vincent Schiavelli are also solid. Milos Forman's Oscar-winning direction is excellent and the adaptation of Ken Kesey's fine novel by Bo Goldman and Lawrence Hauben also won a well-deserved trophy.
So, having laid out the groundwork, it's now time to analyze this film to death. The obvious place to begin is with the "crazy" factor. McMurphy says, "I must be crazy to be in a looney-bin like this". Of course, the thrust of the film is that McMurphy is the only one who ISN'T insane because he understands that he's screwed up, but no more than the average person on the street. He just wants to be free and tries to show the other men that they have a right to be free too. Only the committed patients--Chief and Taber--can truly understand why McMurphy wants to be free. They don't want to be there, but aren't permitted to leave. They can't sympathize with men who are too weak to face the outside world when it's only a few steps away. So, watch the last scene carefully and see which characters are highlighted--Chief and Taber.
Of course, the voluntary patients aren't going anywhere because of the presence of one of the very best screen villains ever--Nurse Ratched. She destroys men rather than building them up or trying to cure them. Her means of therapy is to humiliate and expose weakness, then coldly and calmly break a man's spirit. She's the proof that if you don't play the "game", then the system will run right over you. Nurse Ratched has men in her iron grasp and does whatever she has to do to keep them there. Even the doctors take her advice--or is it that they obey her commands?--against their own judgment. If it's threatening Billy with the wrath of his mother or treating Cheswick (Sydney Lassick) like a child, Nurse Ratched works on them until they become her little puppies. No treatment--from shock therapy to lobotomy--is too rash, no tactic is unfair. She's hateful. Her hair looks like horns, implying that she's a devil twisting these poor men into obedient servants of her rules.
This film was politically correct before that annoying phrase was cool. Perhaps its "PC"ness was unintentional, but think about it. There are representations from the black community (the attendants) from the Asian community (one of the doctors) from the Native American community (Will Sampson as Chief) and even from the short community (Danny DeVito). The one representation that comes across in a negative light is women. Either they're domineering witches in white outfits (the nurses) or they're bimbos (McMurphy's not-so-virtuous lady friends). But then again, this film is told from the overpowered man's point of view. While the women are shown as either sex objects or tyrants, it's a necessarily harsh depiction to make the story work.
Speaking of sex objects, "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" is chock-full of sexual overtones, homoeroticism, rape themes, and double entendres. Harding has sexual issues with his wife while patients Sefelt & Fredrickson have a subtle "relationship". There are even smoldering sexual overtones between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched. It's like the bitter rivals are playing a game to see who can make the other one blink. However, the hinting of sex in THEIR relationship is violent. When he attacks Nurse Ratched, it could be taken as a rape. In keeping with the rape theme, Billy claims that the others (led by McMurphy) forced him to sleep with Candy, one of McMurphy's lady friends who sneaks into the hospital. In truth, Billy IS pushed into the room after trying to weasel out of the "date" which implies that he was raped. And, of course, McMurphy was put in jail for rape in the first place.
This picture has some great subtleties. McMurphy starts out wearing his own clothes, but gradually he dresses like all the rest, wearing a complete hospital-issued outfit. In fact, this is a sterile evironment where everything is white and bland. Only McMurphy's spark can bring any colour into their lives. Another humourous subtlety is when McMurphy names his fellow patients as doctors while on an unscheduled fishing trip, except for rival Harding (who is called "Mr. Harding"). It's a quick insult, but a good one. Some of their names have hidden relevance too. McMurphy's initials are R.P.M. which is also an abbreviation in measuring velocity and speed. McMurphy is certainly a man who moves quickly. St-st-stuttering Billy Bibbit's name even sounds like a stutter. Harding's name becomes "Hard On" to McMurphy, which implies something fairly obvious. And the final subtlety is that in a film about men interacting with each other, there is an appropriate amount of swearing--not too much, just right.
Coming out in 1975, which was shortly after the Vietnam conflict, this film about men failing to adjust to society was timely. Men were coming back from the failure in Vietnam and many of them had great difficulties adjusting to a "sane" society. Like "The Exorcist" this film makes a perfect allegorical reference to the Vietnam hangover. And, in the film AND in the flop known as Vietnam, not even true democracy can win because a higher power is calling all the shots. President Nixon pressed on despite powerful opposition and Nurse Ratched follows rules so stringently that she feels compelled to disallow a majority vote to change the ward's TV policy because "the meeting was adjourned". And keeping on the political kick, Milos Forman, who suffered Czechoslovakian dictatorship, appreciates freedom. He used it as the driving force in "The People Vs. Larry Flynt" and in this picture. It works too. The main characters in both films are sympathetic and interesting, if not particularly wholesome.
The greatest message of all in "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" is that humanity and freedom can conquer all adversity. Even if it takes a symbolic gesture to free your spirit (Chief supplies that gesture in the end), not conforming to unreasonable rules and finding the courage to live life your own way is the most important belief of all. Even doomed Billy had one great moment. Even though his stutter comes back worse than ever when Nurse Ratched rains on his parade, he had that one moment. This picture is funny enough and compelling enough to rip your emotions in half and LIKE that your emotions are being ripped in half. It's impossible not to cheer along with them in the imaginary baseball game sequence or when they score their first two points while playing the attendants in a game of basketball. They experience pure joy and the euphoria they feel is contagious. McMurphy raises a ruckus of epic proportions and, while the other patients don't seem to be affected outwardly in the final few moments, he has indeed made a significant impact on their lives. Jack Nicholson sure did fly "over the cuckoo's nest" and won his first Oscar for playing a man who tries to be free. As McMurphy said, "At least I did that".
USELESS TRIVIA--Academy Award-winning producers of "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest", Saul Zaentz and Michael Douglas, have also won Oscars for other films. Zaentz took home Best Picture honours for "Amadeus" and "The English Patient" while Douglas won Best Actor for "Wall Street".
This film gets a 10/10. It also ranks #7 on My 100 Favourite Films list.
THE RYAN RATING SYSTEM SAYS... 10/10--absolutely outstanding 9/10--excellent 8/10--pretty darn good 7/10--sure, go on and give it a peek 6/10--so-so; ye ol' recommendation point 5/10--not quite worth the dollars 4/10--only if you have a free pass 3/10--don't go, PLEASE don't go 2/10--avoid even if you DO have a free pass 1/10--"Showgirls" territory; truly crappy 0/10--bang your head off a wall instead Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
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