One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) directed by Milos Forman BBC 2. 11.10pm

Posted by celticman on Sat, 01 Mar 2014

This is one of the few films that trump the book, in this case Ken Kessey’s, and was a critical and box office success. I’ve seen it a few times and the script and the performances still shine. It’s a simple premise: Randle Patrick (Mac)McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) takes on the world, which is quite a mouthful, but he’s got quite a mouth. He’s inside for the statutory rape of a fifteen-year-old girl and other offenses, none of which he found particularly offensive. It was filmed in Oregan State Hospital in Salem. As Randle explains to the psychiatrist examining him, after being transferred from a prison for evaluation, he’s thirty seven, she was fifteen, but he thought she was older and she wasn’t exactly being raped, with a know-what-I-mean Jack Nicholson wink and leer. Well, maybe that part is a bit dated. Randle’s nemesis is Nurse Ratchett (Louis Fletcher). She doesn’t enjoy torturing small children, but she does enjoy making patients squirm and beg for her approval and she has the law and the medical establishment behind her. And, behind her disapproval,  there is a ratchetting up of state sanctions. Medication is slow torture, but electro-shock therapy is routinely applied to those that get out of line. The ultimate sanction is surgical lobotomy. Mac sees her game, but he’s just the man to show her a game or two of his own. He fleeces the patients for money and cigarettes, he escapes and steals a bus with all the patients on it, picks up his girlfriend Candy (Marya Small) and borrows a boat to take them fishing. In one of my favourite scenes the patients and Candy are on board the boat standing around with with orange life jackets on and the guy that hires the boats comes down dockside and tells them they can’t take the boat and ask them who they are. Mac introduces each character as a Doctor from the Oregan State Hospital. ‘Dr’ Billy Bibbit (Brad Douriff); ‘Dr’ Charlie Chesswick (Sydney Lassick); ‘Dr’ Martini (Danny de Vito); and ‘Dr’ Max Taber (Christopher Lloyd) all straighten up and inhabit the moniker doctor whilst looking down on the man on the quayside. Mac ricochets from one sanction to the other, until the only one left is surgical. He’s a force of nature that brings life, birds and booze into ward life, but what is his undoing is not his cockiness, but his compassion. He wants stuttering Billy Bibbit to be bird- dogging and having as good at time as him.  Candy is just the trick for him and thinks he’s a nice enough boy for her. The denouement is a pillow over the face and the Chief (Will Sampson) breaking free and running off into the sunset, with that jerky melancholic  pan-pipe music. Happy, but sad.  

Comments

Submitted by Ray Schaufeld on

I can see why people like this straightforward us-and -them movie with it's runaway exuberance and yes Big Nurse Ratchet should be whacked with a hatchet. The McMurphy guy angered me right from the start with his explanation for his admission 'I like to fight too much and I like to f*ck too much.' Sadly he is not a loony he is a 'normal man.' I would quite happily whack him in the Bar-L-Ranch on remand and let the Procurator Fiscal sort him out. And he's such a guy. Probably he would be as happy as Larry doing life in Peterhead provided they didn't give him too much bromide.

The big Native American guy has real depth and so does young Billy who is dominated into nothingness both by the staff and his horrible family.

Yeh it's entertainment and it's watchable. If you are staying in, in front of the telly you might as well....       Elsie

Submitted by celticman on

yeh, I agree with you to a certain extent elsie, but Mac's redeeming quality is compassion. He stays, when he could have run, because Billy needs him. Even when Billy betrays him (and the group) and sides with Nurse Ratchet, Mac knows what's going on. He attacks Nurse Ratchett not because what she did to him (he's a big boy) but because what she made Billy do to himself. Mac isn't a perfect human being, but he is human. That's the beauty of it. 

 

Submitted by Canonette on

The first and only time I saw this film was when I was 16 in an 'A' level sociology class.  Our teacher said that the mental institution represented society and social controls that destroy our individuality, which is why it was relevant to the course.  It made me cry so much I didn't make it to my next lesson.  I'll have to look at it again.

 

Submitted by VeraClark on

I really like this film. There's a sense of us and them, but I feel Mac is a good representation of the everyday flawed character.All got faults.

 

Submitted by celticman on

that's interesting Canonette, I wouldn't want to disagree with a teacher of  'A' level sociology because that would impinge on his or her expression of individuality. I tend more to agree with Vera. We've all got faults, apart from me, which isn't a fault, just the undermining of a virtue.