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About four-fifths of the way through “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Jack Nicholson is featured in an oddly prolonged closeup. It lingers noticeably, so we take note of it. It depicts R.P. McMurphy, who plays him, as being contemplative. It appears at the halfway point between the film’s early jokes and laughter and its eventual descent into tragedy. What’s he contemplating? Is he contemplating fresh resistance or accepting that nothing can be done?
The riddle of the film is what McMurphy is contemplating. All of this builds to a late-scene discovery of him dozing off next to an open window on the floor. He has essentially predetermined his own destiny by choosing not to flee. Has he finally reached the end of his life? Has he finally reached the end of his hope after his revolt against the mental hospital, after the inmates’ uprising he led, after his life-affirming transformations of Billy and the Chief, after his recovery from a first round of shock therapy?
Every ranking of top movies includes “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” from 1975. It was the first movie to receive all five of the major Academy Awards for best picture, actor (Nicholson), actress (Louise Fletcher), director (Milos Forman), and script since “It Happened One Night” (1934). (Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman). That being said, it could have also won for editing and photography (Haskell Wexler). (Richard Chew). I witnessed its world debut in the 3,000-seat Uptown Theatre during the 1975 Chicago Film Festival, and I have never witnessed a more uproarious response to a movie. (no, not even during “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” at Cannes). Following the showing, Michael Douglas, a young co-producer making his debut, paced aimlessly through the lobby.
But what did the viewers, who adored the movie so much, believe it was about? Although the movie is remembered as a comedy about the inmate uprising that McMurphy led, as well as the fishing excursion, the all-night orgy, and his defiance of Nurse Ratched (Fletcher), in reality it is about McMurphy’s defeat. Although the Chief’s escape can be celebrated as a moral triumph, it is little solace for McMurphy.
The 1962 best-selling book by Ken Kesey, which served as the basis for the movie, “Contained the Prophetic Essence of the Whole Vietnam Period of Revolutionary Politics Going Psychedelic,” according to Pauline Kael. It almost deliberately ignored the realities of mental illness in order to transform the patients into a group of cute characters suitable for McMurphy’s cheerleading, toned down for the 1970s into a parable about society’s enforcement of conformism. We learn that Billy need not stutter, the Chief is not actually deaf, and others do not need to be paralyzed by timidity or fear. Nurse Ratched’s pills, Muzak, and support groups won’t cure them; instead, McMurphy will free them to be guys, allowing them to watch the World Series on TV, go fishing, play pick-up hoops, get wasted, and get laid. Be like Jack, is the advice given to these miserable prisoners.
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Since the movie has no interest in being about insanity, its overly simplistic treatment of mental disease is not really a flaw in the film. It centers on a liberated spirit in a rigid structure. Nurse Ratched, who is so rigid, blind, and blatantly certain that she is correct, is a radical example of momism, and McMurphy is the Huck Finn who wishes to rebel against her view of society. The only two women who receive positive representation in the film are Candy and Rose, two of McMurphy’s hooker friends. The film is also deeply afraid of women. I don’t intend this as criticism; just an observation.
Early on in the movie, there are hints about McMurphy’s past: he was sent to a prison farm for assaulting a girl who was underage (“she told me she was 18”) and has been taken to the mental hospital for “evaluation.” He’s 38 years old, blatantly anarchist, and utterly democratic: He regards the patients as real people, views their illnesses as decisions that can be changed, and makes an all-out effort to free them and give them a taste of freedom. The victims are portrayed by the film in unison. The reaction images produced by the photography and editing almost always convey the same message: A particular patient’s fixed face is misinterpreted as a result of the new context that McMurphy provides. Think about the scenario where McMurphy has his pals on board the boat that he has stolen. When he is questioned, he identifies them all as physicians, and when he does, quick cuts to close-up shots of each one showing them all in appropriate medical garb follow. This is purely a comedy and has nothing to do with mental disorder.
One of the pinnacles in a lengthy career of enviable rebels is Nicholson’s performance. In addition to being a fantastic actor and adored American presence, Jack is also an excellent male sprite. He gets away with things because he knows how, wants to, and has the nerve to, which is the joke that lies beneath the surface of most of his acts. His characters represent liberty, anarchy, self-gratification, and defying authority. They also frequently represent kind companionship and a worn-out nobility. The key to the success of his work in “About Schmidt” is that he hides these qualities–he becomes one of the patients, instead of the liberating McMurphy.
One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest Quiz
If his performance is rightfully praised, Louise Fletcher’s is not given enough credit despite winning an Oscar. This might be the case because her Nurse Ratched embodies the traits that we have all been taught to dread in a particular type of female authority figure—a woman who has transmuted sexuality and humanity into duty and righteousness—so thoroughly and completely. She is a dominatrix and a warden while wearing her quasi-military nurse’s uniform, which includes a tiny hat and a cape reminiscent of the Civil War. Her small, silent nurse acolyte follows her everywhere.
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We hardly notice Fletcher’s performance because we are responding to her so intensely. As in the scene where she demands McMurphy get a majority vote to turn on the World Series on TV—despite the fact that the majority of the patients don’t understand what they are voting on—watch her uncanny composure, impassive “fairness,” and rigid adherence to the rules. When McMurphy’s destiny is finally determined, observe how the male administrator hesitantly proposes sending him back to the prison farm, but Ratched adamantly contradicts him: “We must not pass our responsibilities on to someone else.”
The manipulativeness of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” makes some people question whether the movie is good or not. Either blocker lets me see it. It is still enduringly well-liked as an anti-establishment parable, but it succeeds because the mental patients are purposefully used as comedic caricatures. This choice results in the fishing excursion, which is both the most well-known and the most misleading scene in the film. Although the energy of the sequence cannot hide the unease and confusion of men who, in many instances, have no idea where they are or why, it is McMurphy’s great joyful thumb in the eye to Ratched and her kind.
Consider by contrast the quiet, late-night speech by the Chief (Will Sampson), who speaks of his father. This is a glimpse into a real person with real issues who has chosen to remain silent and be regarded as ignorant instead of talking about them. The approach taken by McMurphy serves him well and builds to the tragic perfection of the very last sequences, during which, if he could see them, McMurphy would be pleased with his standout student.
About the quiz
Milos Forman, who was born in Czechoslovakia in 1932, is renowned for his ability to convey American etiquette and values. His early films, such as “Loves of a Blonde” (1965) and “The Firemen’s Ball” (1968), earned him international audiences for their use of paradoxical humor. He was a leader of the Czech New Wave. (In what was seen as a parable of life under communism, the firemen arrive too late to save a barn, but when the farmer complains of the cold, they helpfully move him closer to the flames).
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The Soviet crackdown followed the “Prague spring,” and Forman fled to America, where he has achieved remarkable success. (his “Amadeus” in 1984, produced by “Cuckoo” co-producer Saul Zaentz, won seven Oscars, including best picture and director). Look at the themes that are distinctly American in his movies: the conventional parents and runaway teenagers in “Taking Off” (1971), the anti-war musical “Hair” (1979), the historical romance set in New York City in “Ragtime” (1981), the advocacies for a rabble-rouser in “The People vs. Larry Flynt” (1996), and the portrayal of the McMurphy-like prankster Andy Kaufman in ” (1999). In an era when conformity is the new creed, he views his chosen country in terms of its best nonconformist and outsider customs. Despite the flaws in the movie, His McMurphy triumphs and wins as a character because he stands in for that purifying spirit that occasionally appears to renew us.
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