One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Directed by Milos Forman Starring Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Brad Dourif USA, 1975 Rated R (language, violence)
C
Czech director Milos Forman, in 1984, made one of the most moving and eerie films I've ever seen. His Amadeus is theatrical, breathtaking, and frightening in its emotional power. How sad that he is remembered most for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a slightly good film that became one of the only movies to win all five major Academy Awards and boasted Jack Nicholson's trademark performance as Randle McMurphy. To be sure, Cuckoo's is quite an intense movie but the intensity seems to disguise a rather flawed basis.
In this story of human bondage, tyranny, authority, and liberation, McMurphy (Nicholson) is a man who has been jailed for "raping" a fifteen ("going on thirty")-year-old girl. He commits crimes to get out of his boring job, but he eventually gets sent to a mental institution for allegedly being insane. He is well aware that he is not crazy and the head of the asylum is certain he isn't, too; nevertheless, he is kept in the hospital for further observation. During his prolonged stay, he meets several colorful characters including Billy, a childish, stuttering young man in perpetual fear of his mother (Brad Dourif); Harding, an intellectual man unable to get over his wife's adultery (William Redfield); Martini, a man of an infantile nature (Danny DeVito); and Chief, a silent, tall figure who later becomes McMurphy's greatest companion (Will Sampson).
McMurphy becomes acquainted with the head nurse at the hospital, Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), a seemingly heartless, cold, and insufferable woman who casts a wicked spell of anxiety over the dependent patients at the asylum. Eager to annoy this strict authority, McMurphy encourages the impressionable group of fellow madmen to rebel against her and the hospital staff. After trying so hard to get away from the real world, McMurphy realizes how dangerous his new surroundings are to the human spirit. The staff are crooked, law-abiding, and merciless and only inflict a sense of hopelessness and entrapment on the already weak patients.
McMurphy, being sane, sees what is happening to these men. They are without any independence and are in a state of mental isolation. Since they have not been exposed to humanity and real life, they have become useless in a world of stringent routines and life-abandoning activities. McMurphy learns that most patients at the institution are not committed as he is and are free to come and go as they please. They don't leave, however, because they are too afraid of the real world. McMurphy raises hell and is convinced he must not be pulled by the current of brainwashing that has become the seeming sole priority of the hospital. The doctors and staff may have good intentions, but their methods of "curing" the mentally ill are dangerous and emotionally lethal. Many patients, including McMurphy, are being worked on with electric shock procedures.
(*Spoilers ahead, do not read further if you have not seen the film*)
Eventually, the voice of the enigmatic character, Chief, emerges. First thought to be deaf and dumb, Chief forges a strong friendship with McMurphy and both share the same dream of escaping the hospital.
One night, McMurphy summons two lady friends from the real world, asks them to bring booze to the asylum, and all the patients get drunk and have a party. Billy, in particular, undergoes a metamorphosis during this pivotal night in the men's lives. Once a stuttering, mentally immature character, Billy loses his virginity and gains confidence during the party, only to have it snatched from him by Nurse Ratched when she returns the next morning and threatens to tell his mother about what went on the preceding night. Billy, tragically, commits suicide. This and the final sequence are the most intense and bleak moments of the film. They ring true, though, and are not overly extreme like much of the rest of the film.
In the final sequence, Chief is ready to escape the hospital with McMurphy, but his plans are ruined when he discovers McMurphy has finally been ruined by the electric-shock experiments performed on him by the doctors. In one of the most heartbreaking moments of the film, Chief hugs his friend and mercifully smothers and kills him, saving him from the joyless life inside the walls of the hospital. The dismal mood of that scene is replaced with the triumph of Chief, who becomes the focal point of the story at the end. He follows through with the inspiring encouragement of McMurphy and escapes the institution.
What is pitiful about One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is not these scenes, which are memorable and not without their emotional pull. Rather it is the repetitiveness of the rest of the story, which circles aimlessly for more than two hours. Instead of confronting the moral at hand, Cuckoo's beats around the bush, diluting the power of the film's message. The atrocities of the hospital are accented while the truth of the movie is allowed to fade into the background.
Aside from these criticisms, the performances are observant and, at times, masterful. Louise Fletcher is subtly cruel as Nurse Ratched. Her performance is almost perfect. Jack Nicholson, in a legendary portrayal, is also worthy of attention and accolades. He makes a great, havoc-brewing hero. Brad Dourif and Will Sampson also give poignant and noteworthy turns.
However, this fails to compensate for the lack of enticing material in the movie. The horrors of the hospital are attention-grabbing, but are of little interest to me in the muddle of a movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is. The movie is inconsistent: shifting from being tedious to being very effective. It is dark, moody, but only partially successful. With all the respect this movie has garnered from audiences these past two decades, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest came across to me as trying desperately to extract profundity out of outrageousness and, in my eyes, it fails.
By Andrew Chan
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