Directed by: Milos Forman
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Brad Dourif, Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd, Will Sampson, William Redfield, Sydney Lassick, Scatman Crothers
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest contains moments of inspiration and brilliance which don't add up to a satisfying whole. The film won five Oscars and is one of three films to win Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay (Adapted) in the same year. The performances are brilliant, the film creates a convincing depiction of a cold, sterile mental hospital whose unsympathetic caregivers simply want to keep the patients medicated, but why did the film not fully work for me?
The film centers on R.P. McMurphy (Nicholson), a prisoner who is transferred to a mental hospital for observation. Is McMurphy insane? Probably not, but he sees living in the psych ward as a step up from doing hard labor at a prison farm. He is rebellious, intelligent, and able to rally his fellow patients to disrupt the inflexible Nurse Mildred Ratched (Fletcher), who runs the ward with an iron fist cloaked in a façade of caring and calm. She pretends to be calm, rational, and have the patients' best interests at heart, but she and her staff would rather just keep the patients quiet and zonked on medication.
McMurphy by nature is a nightmare for Ratched. His very presence is a threat to her reign. He is able to see his fellow patients' needs more clearly than the doctors can. He tries unsuccessfully to have the World Series shown on TV, but Nurse Ratched insists on a majority vote from the patients, who are either terrified of Ratched or have no idea what they are voting on. McMurphy soon steals a bus and takes the group on an unauthorized fishing trip, which is supposed to be an emotional highlight, but the scene drags on beyond any reasonable dramatic impact.
Nicholson won his first Oscar for playing McMurphy as the shifty lifeforce that he is. He is playing an angle, to be sure, but he truly cares about his fellow patients. He takes great pride in their small improvements. When he sets up young, naïve Billy with a prostitute, he wants to show the kid a good time, not foreseeing its tragic consequences because Nurse Ratched knows just how to manipulate him. McMurphy is unable to save himself in the end, but he does influence Chief (Samspon), a tall Native American who seemingly can not speak, to finally muster his strength and courage to escape from the institution. Sampson is a powerful screen presence as a man who is more than we assume he is.
Fletcher is of course the recognizable villain in the film, but she is a microcosm of the shift in medical care over the decades. It is more lucrative to keep patients hooked on meds than actually trying to cure them. A cure for any of the patients here may be good for the patient, but bad for profits. McMurphy is shocked to learn that some of the patients were not committed, but are voluntarily residents. They can leave at any time. Why don't they go? Probably because the institution provides safety and structure to a degree they can not find out in the real world. The real world is scarier to them than Nurse Ratched.
Cuckoo's Nest sets itself up as sly social commentary but never emerges as powerful as it could be. Because some scenes are so brilliantly observed, it is frustrating when others fall flat. The turning points of the fishing trip and the late night party after Nurse Ratched leaves are simply too cumbersome. The movie then has to gather up its momentum again. Milos Forman is a brilliant director who went on to win a second Oscar for Amadeus (1984) and direct such great films as Ragtime (1981), The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), Man on the Moon (1999), and others. He captures a dreadful environment here and does his best to bring it to life. This is a film I really wanted to like, but can't quite do so.
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