One Flew Over the Cuckoo's NestWhat does "freedom" mean to you? Does it mean being able to turn on the TV when you want to catch the World Series? Does it mean taking a boat out on the water to go fishing with some buddies? Does it mean being able to sleep with a beautiful woman? Maybe it means all of these things, or at least the ability to choose whether or not you have a choice in the matter. Freedom is the fundamental theme of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and what our ability to exercise that freedom means in the confines of an institution--any institution, be it hospital, nation, society--which tells us what to do and think, under the auspices of our own good...and what happens when we say, "no".
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Randle Patrick "Mac" McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) had a plan; his plan was to commute his prison sentence for statutory rape and assault by relocating to a mental hospital, because his prison supervisors believe he might be crazy. Certainly, he speaks his mind--or at least wants to give enough people that impression--and makes claims that he isn't crazy. But Mac is playing the system, using this as a way to stretch his legs before his assumed sentences is run out. But things work differently in the mental hospital; the focus isn't his sentence for his monitors, but his mental health...and Mac makes deliberate attempts to appear crazy, or at least rock the boat. The manifestation of his frustration at captivity and domination comes in the form of Nurse Mildred Ratched (Louise Fletcher)--collected, controlled, deliberate...basically, the polar opposite of Mac, who tries to appeal to her in his attempt at being reasonable, only to encounter implacable resistance. Is Nurse Ratched trying to antagonize Mac? Is she simply upholding the professional standard of an institution to which she is a highly-regarded member and contributor? In many reviews and analyses of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Nurse Ratched is identified as a villainous figure, the embodiment of anything from the tyrannical avatar of a "nanny state" government, a psycho-pharmacological peddler pushing sedatives on a populous because it's easier to dose and keep clients than to cure the sickness...even a kind of abstract figure of the old guard, resisting the new, challenging ideas to which "Mac" is the spearhead in his own, "devil-may-care" kind of revolutionary attitude. But watching the film, for so much of it, frankly, Nurse Ratched seems like a fairly reasonable woman, one who fosters the idea that social contact and group therapy is designed to draw out people from their unhealthy fixation on withdrawing from the world. She rations the cigarettes of the patients because Mac has been hustling them away in hands of poker. She refuses to play the ball game on the TV because she is cognizant of the way the unstable patients might react to overstimulation. These are all plausible--if convenient--reasons for her vice-like grip over the patients at the hospital, many of which are, in fact, not committed, but--in theory--"voluntary" patients, who could--again, in theory--walk out the door any time they like. Nurse Ratched is, for my money, one of cinema's most insidious, most subtle of villains, because instinctively, we know--we feel--that she is not acting in our best interests--since we identify with Mac and the patients. This becomes transparent when--after discovering Billy naked in bed with a woman Mac snuck in--she manipulates him into shame and fear; no, she's not letting anything "slide", but really, she knows where the rest of them belong: under her thumb. Nurse Ratched, politics awaits you.
But if Nurse Ratched is the villain, does that make Mac the hero? Consider Randle McMurphy: a convicted felon, a brawler, a "rough around the edges" kind of a jerk, but a fella who would take the time to actually talk to the "Chief" (Will Sampson), a giant Native American who neither speaks nor responds to language. Mac likes the big guy; he even teaches him how to play basketball, which his natural talents give him a significant advantage in playing. Mac goes out of his way to try to show the guys on the "inside" a good time, usually involving some kind of contraband or escape routine; he tries to give them a taste of life. It floors McMurphy when he is told that most of the people he has been trying to help "escape" are there of their own free will. "Free will"...there's that phrase...just what does it mean? Sure, most of these guys could leave, but they don't; and yet they don't seem happy where they are. They are forced to endure humiliation, being treated like children, with prescribed routines and schedules that are as intractable as Nurse Ratched is. They are--unmistakably--prisoners, but they tolerate their prison. Why? Because they are too weak to leave; they have had the strength, the will, ripped from them...shocked, lobotomized, or just plain drained away. Maybe Mac recognizes this, or maybe it comes down to this: he made a bet with one of the patients, Taber (Christopher Lloyd), that he could get under Ratched's skin, a bet made over a dollar....and it's pretty clear Mac hates to lose. So is McMurphy the "savior of the 'feeb farm'"? Is he the great messiah of the mental ward, leading his flock to the promised land of babes, rum, and baseball? Even if that wasn't his intention from the get-go, he grows fond of his fellow inmates. It's pretty clear that MacMurphy likes spending time with all of them, even the uptight Harding (William Redfield). Mac doesn't change, he doesn't yield up his personality upon the altar of acquiescence, and he pays dearly for his rebellion. He finds that what he thought was a clever way to avoid more hard jail time turned out to be a real tribulation for his soul, being told what he can and can't do, being forced to play by Nurse Ratched's rules (which are not so much her rules as they are the psychiatric ward's). It's an easy first reading to point at Ratched as the "bad guy"--she is, though--but to also endow Mac with heroic qualities, simply because he is her opposite. What makes One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest so exemplary is that it doesn't simply draw a line between the so-called hero and villain, but it take a real conflict that is deep within us all--the fight for independence pitted against the addiction to comfort and complacency, or even real mental anguish--and puts all the pieces in the box and lets the drama unfold in a natural way. Because there are no heroes, there are no villains, but there are McMurphys and there are Nurse Ratcheds, and most of us will fall somewhere in between..
Recommended for: Fans of a drama which challenges your understanding of freedom, of sanity, and even of the benefits of psychiatric care. For the inner rebel in us all, or maybe even the inner control freak; either way, you may gravitate toward one way of seeing the movie or another.
But if Nurse Ratched is the villain, does that make Mac the hero? Consider Randle McMurphy: a convicted felon, a brawler, a "rough around the edges" kind of a jerk, but a fella who would take the time to actually talk to the "Chief" (Will Sampson), a giant Native American who neither speaks nor responds to language. Mac likes the big guy; he even teaches him how to play basketball, which his natural talents give him a significant advantage in playing. Mac goes out of his way to try to show the guys on the "inside" a good time, usually involving some kind of contraband or escape routine; he tries to give them a taste of life. It floors McMurphy when he is told that most of the people he has been trying to help "escape" are there of their own free will. "Free will"...there's that phrase...just what does it mean? Sure, most of these guys could leave, but they don't; and yet they don't seem happy where they are. They are forced to endure humiliation, being treated like children, with prescribed routines and schedules that are as intractable as Nurse Ratched is. They are--unmistakably--prisoners, but they tolerate their prison. Why? Because they are too weak to leave; they have had the strength, the will, ripped from them...shocked, lobotomized, or just plain drained away. Maybe Mac recognizes this, or maybe it comes down to this: he made a bet with one of the patients, Taber (Christopher Lloyd), that he could get under Ratched's skin, a bet made over a dollar....and it's pretty clear Mac hates to lose. So is McMurphy the "savior of the 'feeb farm'"? Is he the great messiah of the mental ward, leading his flock to the promised land of babes, rum, and baseball? Even if that wasn't his intention from the get-go, he grows fond of his fellow inmates. It's pretty clear that MacMurphy likes spending time with all of them, even the uptight Harding (William Redfield). Mac doesn't change, he doesn't yield up his personality upon the altar of acquiescence, and he pays dearly for his rebellion. He finds that what he thought was a clever way to avoid more hard jail time turned out to be a real tribulation for his soul, being told what he can and can't do, being forced to play by Nurse Ratched's rules (which are not so much her rules as they are the psychiatric ward's). It's an easy first reading to point at Ratched as the "bad guy"--she is, though--but to also endow Mac with heroic qualities, simply because he is her opposite. What makes One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest so exemplary is that it doesn't simply draw a line between the so-called hero and villain, but it take a real conflict that is deep within us all--the fight for independence pitted against the addiction to comfort and complacency, or even real mental anguish--and puts all the pieces in the box and lets the drama unfold in a natural way. Because there are no heroes, there are no villains, but there are McMurphys and there are Nurse Ratcheds, and most of us will fall somewhere in between..
Recommended for: Fans of a drama which challenges your understanding of freedom, of sanity, and even of the benefits of psychiatric care. For the inner rebel in us all, or maybe even the inner control freak; either way, you may gravitate toward one way of seeing the movie or another.