Best Picture: # 48
Original Release Date: November 19, 1975
Rating: R
Runtime: 2 hours, 13 minutes
Director: Milos Formos
Quick Impressions:
I’ve never read Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and this was my first time watching the film, but I did see the stage play in high school when my prom date junior year took me to a production by a local community college. I found that particular production strangely thought-provoking because the actress cast as Nurse Ratched was sick and replaced by an unprepared understudy. (I have the impression that her replacement was actually the assistant director and not a true understudy, though I’ll admit I question this recollection. Why would they have volunteered such information to the audience? How else would I have known?) So in the version I saw, at all times, Nurse Ratched marched around with a clip board cradled in front of her chest, and when she had a line, she looked down and read it. This wasn’t an occasional thing. She read all her lines. (The clipboard idea was a bit clumsy, but at least it made more sense than Nurse Ratched carrying around a cookie jar to peek at her lines like Ricky Nelson!)
When I went home and reported this to my mother, she said, “But Nurse Ratched is one of the most important parts! Louise Fletcher won an Academy Award for that role!” She was sure that must have detracted from the power of the play. And it kind of did. But it also added a dimension I found provocative. Nurse Ratched is the one telling them all what to do, and yet there she is reading from a script. All the men fear her. Ostensibly she controls the whole environment. But every one of her lines is written down for her by someone else, and she must meticulously follow these directions. I very much doubt that the device was intended to make a statement. I’m sure it was done out of desperation because of how suddenly the lead actress became unavailable. But it still made me think.
After my conversation with my mother, I expected Louise Fletcher to play Nurse Ratched with larger-than-life menace, but she’s pretty low-key in the part, too. Her intensity does not come from being imposing in the way I had imagined. Instead, she’s quietly terrifying. I did find her fascinating, though. At moments, she seems almost evil, diabolical. But at others, I wondered, “Is she actually a calculating sadist? How much can we trust the impressions of McMurphy? Perhaps she is well meaning but inept. Or perhaps he misunderstands what she is trying to do or misconstrues what is happening.” I wish I had read the novel. In the film, Nurse Ratched comes across as a Mrs. Danvers type. I can see why Fletcher won an Oscar. She’s quite fascinating in the role. (Plus, she knows all her lines!)
The Plot:
Randle P. McMurphy is not insane, but he’s in no hurry to prove that to anyone. A repeat offender, he’d rather serve out the rest of his time in a mental hospital where instead of being on a work crew, he can relax for a while and commit random, zany acts with impunity. After all, if he’s mentally ill, what can anybody do to him? This seems to be McMurphy’s game when he enters the hospital. But the longer he stays there, the more he becomes aware of the danger of his environment. Tormenting the controlling head of the ward, Nurse Ratched, seems like good fun at first, but then McMurphy learns that Nurse Ratched has more power over him than he realized. To Nurse Ratched’s frustration, McMurphy makes a huge impression on the other patients. By trying to create chaos, he inadvertently helps them, and becoming their spirited ringleader seems to have a positive effect on his own character. But Nurse Ratched doesn’t like the changes she sees inside her ward. Not at all.
The Good:
Thanks to watching the play and talking at length with my mother, I went into this film knowing the plot and remembering several key moments. I had the impression that I had basically seen the film without seeing it. But Milos Forman’s movie managed to surprise me a lot. I knew the plot, yes, and I knew the characters, but I was totally unaware of the movie’s cast (beyond Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher). Good grief, everyone is in this movie! The number of famous actors who pop up in that mental hospital is staggering.
Martini is played by Danny DeVito! I never knew that! And Taber is Christopher Lloyd! Both of DeVito and Lloyd are gifted actors, but I associate them primarily with 1980s comedies. I know they’re still working, but the point is, I first became aware of them in the 1980s and think of them as comedians. I know Taxi started in the late 70s, but I never realized DeVito had roles before that show. And I had no idea Christopher Lloyd’s career started so early. I said to my daughter, “That’s strange because I don’t remember watching their work until the 1980s.” And then I thought, “Yes, stupid, because you don’t remember doing anything until the 1980s. You were born in 1979!” At any rate, it’s strange to see that the same kind of facial expressions and energy that make you a scene stealer in a comedy, make you a convincing mental patient in a drama!
In this hospital, famous faces lurk around every corner. Scatman Crothers works in the ward. Brad Dourif (aka Gríma Wormtongue and the guy in Alien Resurrection) is Billy. Vincent Schiavelli (who I remember mainly from Ghost and Batman Returns) is there, too. (As a child, I used to call him, “The creepy-faced guy,” which seems mean of me, but he did usually play vaguely sinister characters.) I had no idea any of these actors were in this film! And when I then looked up their filmographies, I suddenly realized that their careers vastly exceeded my knowledge of them.
That mental hospital is full of such colorful characters. If you haven’t seen the movie, just imagine Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd, and Brad Dourif playing mental patients. They’re all excellent in their roles. Also good are Sydney Lassick as Cheswick, William Redfield as Harding, and especially Will Sampson as Chief Bromden. (I would watch a spin-off about his character. In fact, the whole movie could be an origin story. I’d love to see a whole Chief franchise, kind of the way Stallone turned First Blood into eighty-seven Rambo movies.)
Best, of course, are Nicholson and Fletcher, both of whom won Oscars. These two Oscar-winning performances could not be more different, and both characters are complex and thought-provoking, easy to puzzle over yet hard to unravel with any amount of thought. (I wish I had read the book. Why do I know Chief Bromden narrates the book? Maybe my mother read the book?) Nicholson’s McMurphy claims to believe he might be mentally ill, but his whole grinning wink-wink attitude suggests strongly that he’s faking. But the longer we watch, the more we start to believe that his con might be true, whether he knows it or not.
“I feel like the main guy might actually have something wrong with him,” my daughter noted apprehensively as McMurphy led the others on a surprise fishing trip. “He might not be just pretending. He might have issues with impulse control.” Even if he is pretending to be crazy, pretending to be crazy in order to get yourself committed is not normal behavior. Even setting aside McMurphy’s repeat run-ins with the law, we have to ask ourselves what kind of person uses time in a mental hospital as a get out of jail free card, doing absolutely any reckless thing that pops into his head with the rationale that no one can punish him if he’s labelled “crazy.” (I intended “get out of jail free card” figuratively, but that is literally what McMurphy is trying to do.)
When I watched the play, I viewed McMurphy as a heroic figure, or at least a charismatic anti-hero. He’s no saint, and he’s a little on the wild side, but the audience is definitely supposed to be on his side, rooting for him and against Nurse Ratched.
In the film, the situation seems more complicated. Yes, McMurphy is a kind of hero to the men in the ward. His presence there genuinely helps them (to a point). At any rate, it improves their quality of life (for a time). And his actions seem to have a therapeutic effect on at least one character. Funnily enough, being committed actually does seem to help McMurphy, too. It’s not anything the doctors or nurses do that helps him. It’s that instead of committing anti-social crimes, (or, at least, in addition to committing anti-social crimes), he becomes invested in helping build up a group of other people. (Now granted, he’s only helping them accidentally and lazily at first. And even at the end, his most selfless act pretty much backfires spectacularly. But the point is, McMurphy starts to be kind, to do things because he cares for others.)
Here’s the problem I have, though. McMurphy is not a good guy. He’s really not. When I first watched the play, I thought, “McMurphy may be a little reckless and wild, but he’s basically a good guy, and Nurse Ratched is evil.” Um no. I’ll talk about Nurse Ratched in a moment, but even if she is evil (which is open to debate), McMurphy has serious character flaws. He’s a rapist. (I guess that’s more than a character flaw. Can you imagine filling out a self-evaluation and listing character flaws? “Well, I don’t take criticism well. I sometimes miss deadlines. I’m a rapist.”) And in his final big confrontation with Nurse Ratched, he is far from unoffending. His heart may be in the right place (or at the very least, his rage is understandable). But his hands are not in the right place. Nurse Ratched may be a sinister control freak, but McMurphy really is violent and dangerous. (She’s not making that up, and she’s not the one who made him that way.)
I like Nicholson’s performance here. It just seems like classic Jack Nicholson. This is the kind of character he plays best, and I can’t imagine anyone else playing the part (which is saying something because I already told you I’ve seen someone else play the part).
Louise Fletcher is excellent, too. Nurse Ratched is even more of an enigma to me than McMurphy. I wish I had read the book because I’m sure it would provide more insight about her character. She certainly seems awful, but Fletcher plays her with such a calm demeanor. I find myself wondering about her motivations. Obviously her group therapy sessions do much more harm than good. My big question is, does she act with malice? Does she intend evil? Whether she intends evil or not, she does evil. But I wish I could say for sure what her intentions are. When I saw her sitting in a meeting with the doctors and other nurses, her interaction in that group gave me pause. I know it’s more than possible that her talk about wanting to help patients in front of her colleagues is just a con. But what if it’s not? What if she is trying to help? The reason that I wonder is McMurphy himself. He’s the character who makes Nurse Ratched seem so spectacularly important. When I heard the doctor in that meeting comment that Nurse Ratched is the only one who seems to have made any kind of impression on McMurphy, I began to question my own assumptions. Isn’t it possible that she only seems so sinister because we’re seeing her through McMurphy’s eyes? He’s the character we’re following. He’s showing the story to us, framing the story for us, and he’s not a very reliable narrator. (Granted, there is one other character who does seem much saner than everyone else in the story, and he sees things McMurphy’s way, too.) I can’t quite figure Nurse Ratched out, but I do love the way the movie makes her seem a bit like Mrs. Danvers from Rebecca.
The big draw of the film is the performances, but One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest also gives us a fascinating peek inside a psychiatric ward in the 1960s (when the story is set). Apparently, many of the scenes are filmed inside the Oregon State Mental Hospital in Salem. It also brings to light a detail that no one should forget. For committing a crime, people must serve a sentence. For being deemed mentally unstable, they can potentially be locked away forever. So be compliant, everyone.
Best Scene Visually:
I love the basketball scene when Nurse Ratched watches through the window. She’s positioned just like Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca. I think the Wicked Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs also stands like this during Snow White’s first scene with the prince (but I may be mis-remembering that. I know she peeks out of the window in Disneyland’s Fantasyland). Nurse Ratched is so much like Mrs. Danvers. In Rebecca, Mrs. Danvers is constantly terrorizing the narrator, and there’s a variation on gaslighting in her methods. Mrs. Danvers arranges it so that if the second Mrs. de Winter admits that the housekeeper frightens her, she seems insane or silly to everyone else and even to herself. I’m positive that the comparison between Ratched and Danvers invited by the image of the nurse peering down from the window is intentional. This seems especially significant in light of Nurse Ratched’s final interaction with Billy.
I’m also fond of the way Nicholson plays his return to the ward after a shock treatment. It’s wonderful foreshadowing.
Best Action Sequence:
The party scene is the best. Scatman Crothers is so entertaining as Turk, and it’s almost pleasant to watch the entire ward descend into chaos. McMurphy’s audacity at trying this is so glorious. How can you not root for someone who violates the rules in such a flagrant, grandiose, and needless way? This scene gave me more pure enjoyment than anything in the entire movie, and McMurphy’s final interactions with Billy are genuinely touching. The fact that McMurphy does something selfless for another human being seems significant. Never mind about what he does. The important part is that he cares.
Best Scene:
The best part of the film is its final scene, McMurphy’s last encounter with Chief Bromden through the end of the movie. This is what I mainly remembered from the stage play, the big, dramatic finish. (Well, that and the clip board.)
The Negatives:
I don’t understand why the film does not include the poem that contains the line “one flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.” I don’t even know why I know the poem. I’m assuming it’s in the play. Either that, or my mother recited it to me when we were talking about the play. Since watching the film, I can’t get that particular line out of my head, and it’s not even in the movie!
While trying to discover if the poem is recited in the play, I discovered that Chief Bromden recites it in the novel. (I feel like some part of me knew this. Maybe my mother read the book.) I wish that I had read the novel now. The film focuses so much on Jack Nicholson’s character, and McMurphy is hard to trust. But I do trust Chief Bromden’s judgment, and I’d love to hear his narration, and his spoken interpretation of these events. If in the book, it is Chief Bromden who describes for us the nefarious nature of Nurse Ratched, then I’d take his word for it with far fewer qualms.
“That movie was so sad,” my daughter said repeatedly after we watched the film. Sad is not a strong enough word. What an awful situation! What a terrible hospital! You know it’s bad when a criminal with impulse control issues and antisocial tendencies is the only beacon of hope in people’s lives. McMurphy is the one making a positive difference to the patients’ lives, and initially his only goal is to sow chaos. People who voluntarily commit themselves know they need help. How sad that they get more help from a violent criminal than the medical staff ostensibly there to care for them!
I wonder how much research novelist Ken Kesey did. Milos Forman filmed in a real mental hospital. Does Kesey’s novel accurately reflect life inside such a facility in that time period, or is he just trying to tell a good story? Either way, the work is good, but I do wish I knew if this is just one man’s story or the story of almost everyone struggling with mental illness in the United States in the 1960s.
I also wish I had more insight into Nurse Ratched’s character. I’d love to know more about her background and just what she thinks she’s doing. Is she simply a sadist, a control freak? Does she merely enjoy manipulating and controlling others because of some slavish need for order, or is she actively, deliberately trying to do harm to the patients? I wish we could see the story from Nurse Ratched’s point of view. From watching the play, I had the feeling that what happens in the end was petty (and terrible, disproportionate) vengeance by her, like the triumphant masterstroke of a cunning villain. But watching the movie reminded me that certain actions must have some sort of consequence. Is what happens at the end all by her doing? Is it all her design? Or is the decision made by others (and in a sense by McMurphy himself when he behaves in the way that he does)?
I’ll never know these answers. I’ll have to read the book. Since Chief Bromden is the narrator, I doubt I’ll get the insight into Nurse Ratched I’m longing for, but you never know, I guess.
In honesty, my only real complaint about the film is that I am not entirely sure what to take from it. I can’t share McMurphy’s sentiment that there’s nothing so wrong with the other men in the ward. The other patients clearly do need help. In fact, so does McMurphy. I do agree that Nurse Ratched is not helping them, and may, in fact, be actively harming them. It is ironic (and sad) that a selfish, reckless repeat offender with obvious impulse control issues and potential antisocial tendencies does more to help the patients than the doctors and nurses caring for them. But I can’t quite embrace McMurphy’s solution for mental illness which seems to be, “Come on, just be fine and act normal.” That doesn’t work for everyone. That’s the point. To me, the fact that McMurphy doesn’t recognize mental illness in the others suggests that he himself does have sort of psychiatric problem. But the system meant to help the patients is torturing and slowly killing them. That is clear. I wish I understood the motivations of Nurse Ratched.
I suppose in the end her motivations don’t matter. The idea that simply being thought mentally ill could get someone put away forever is rather chilling. But then, of course, most of the patients could leave any time they want. So maybe it’s that being mentally ill could get someone put away forever. That’s less chilling.
During the fishing sequence, I noted to my daughter that no one would call these men mentally ill if they were pirates. But that’s the thing. Pirates aren’t always great at living in society. A pirate ship may simply be a floating psychiatric ward. But if you want to be a pirate, McMurphy, then why let yourself get caught? Fight harder and sail away. McMurphy traps himself. You get the idea that he wants to be caught to experience the pleasure of “getting away with” his reckless actions by being labelled mentally ill. It’s almost like he can’t function without a Nurse Ratched type to rebel against. I need to read the book to get Chief Bromden’s thoughts directly. But McMurphy and Nurse Ratched are quite a pair. That’s for sure. I wonder if this story could be read allegorically.
Overall:
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is an engrossing, well-acted film that tells a sad, frustrating story. It’s convinced me never to be committed to a mental hospital in the 1960s, which should prove easy to avoid.