Film School Weekend: I Finally Saw ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST

I'll be honest, I seriously considered not doing this one.

Some movies just loom too large to freely admit you've gone three and a half decades without having seen it yet.  You know the type of movie.  They're the ones where people ask you with their mouths agape "Seriously??" a couple of times once you let it slip, as if you're going to eventually say, "Ha!  Got you!  Of course I've seen it.  I'm not an idiot."

But, nope, never seen ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST.  There's no ulterior motive as to why, I just never got around to it.  It is such a fixture in film history that I've essentially been able to glean the plot just from being around long enough.  I was aware that Jack Nicholson takes on an evil, cold Nurse Ratched in a psychiatric institution.  I had seen a couple of scenes from when it was reviewed on the very first episode of Siskel and Ebert(back when it was called Opening Soon At a Theatre Near You!).  I was also aware of it as a piece of Academy Awards trivia, it being one of only three movies to win what are considered the "Big Five" awards (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Screenplay).

But I'm not sure I was really aware of what ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST was about, nor the type of story director Milos Forman was trying to tell with his Oscar-winning film, one that's primarily about flawed humans finding the humanity in other flawed humans.  Nor was I prepared for the interesting challenges the script, written by Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman, puts into place that actually serve to drive the story's point home.

I'm not even sure I really knew what the title meant.  

But, in the spirit of the exercise, that all merely served as a compelling reason to finally knock this one out.  Here we go!

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1975)

Directed by: Milos Forman

Starring: Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Brad Dourif, William Redfield

Written by: Lawrence Hauben, Bo Goldman

Length: 133 mins

Released: November 19, 1975

As mentioned, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST is the story of R. P. McMurphy (Nicholson), a guy who has been transferred from a prison work camp to a mental institution with suspicions that he is playing up a psychiatric illness to get out of doing labor.  He ends up under the care of the cold and unfeeling Nurse Ratched (Fletcher), and in the company of the various long-term residents of the institution, all played by a murderer's row of future beloved character actors (Christopher Lloyd, Brad Dourif and Danny DeVito, to name just three).

As his time there increases, and he realizes they can keep him there for as long as they want, McMurphy begins a revolution against Ratched and their keepers.  Along the way, it becomes clear McMurphy is the only person in the whole facility who sees his fellow patients (inmates?) as humans, creatures beyond their psychoses and medications.  

I have to admit, I was a little apprehensive to CUCKOO'S NEST at first.  To be fair, I was bringing my own crap into it; I was a little concerned about its portrayal of mental health professionals as uncaring beasts who are interested only in repressing their patients' lives and happiness.  No doubt, abhorrent treatment of people with vulnerable diseases has been an issue for centuries, and continues to this very day; I think we all know at least someone with a horror story, especially when the prison industry gets involved with psychiatric care.  But I worry sometimes that people still equate therapy with Nurse Ratched when, for most people, it's just talking to someone for an hour every week while you learn to lie to them less and less over time.  The movie just had an initial air of "you don't need those meds, you just need to live, maaaaan" (I might be speaking out of ignorance; I have no concept of the state of psychiatry in the 70's).

But once I reached the obvious conclusion that Ratched was meant more as a symbol of a system rather than an individual, it clicked into place.  Because, duh, of course she is.  In this specific case, she represents a healthcare system, but she could be any system that strips people of their humanity.  Justice, prison, insurance.....take your pick, really.  I'm not sure why that reframing helped me, but it did (I think I just have sympathy for mental health workers, an underserved job).  Under her care, these are patients that are only meant to take their meds and stay under observation.  Even when they're outside, they don't really do much.  At least, until McMurphy starts throwing basketballs at them.

Something I found interesting about the story as constructed that likely would be a sticking point in modern cinema?  It's firmly, clearly established before we really even get going that McMurphy isn't exactly a noble man, or even a nice guy.  I mean, that's obvious from the fact that he arrives at the institution from a prison work farm.  In one of the first scenes we get with him, though, it's revealed that he's at the work farm in the first place for the a statutory rape of a fifteen-year-old.  McMurphy isn't exactly remorseful about it either, making some flippant remark about her looking older.

I would imagine many people might now look at a scene like that and feel the urge to dismiss the movie entirely, just another example of a movie of its time reflecting mores that are no longer acceptable and, thus, not worth my time.  And, don't get me wrong, film history is filled with legitimate examples of this.  I just don't know that this is one of them. 

I actually think making McMurphy a noble hero, someone in the joint for something not actually bad ("he was framed" or "he was defending someone weaker than himself", all the kinds of cheats movies do to make their antiheroes not really antiheroes) might have made the movie weaker.

Because, that's what we're kind of used to, right?  We now demand our heroes be flawless, or at least exhibit flaws that we're okay with (the romantic usage of drugs and alcohol), or flaws that aren't really flaws at all ("he just cares too much!" or "he's dark and tortured" are both fun ones).  STAR WARS will probably never recover from the backlash against the idea of Luke Skywalker having a significant and consequential lapse in judgment that causes him to hide in isolation, as he did in THE LAST JEDI.  Can you imagine if Marvel had made Iron Man a statutory rapist (instead of just a a good old fashioned womanizer, egotist and drunk, which are merely "fun character traits")?

But R. P. McMurphy is.  He's nasty, and his reaction to being called on it is, um, really something.  

Yet he's still better at, and more capable of, recognizing humanity in scattered outcasts than the state.

And that's the point.  At least, I think.  Maybe I'm also defending a very outdated piece of screenwriting by over-intellectualizing it.  But I don't think I am.  I think McMurphy's lack of real nobility is crucial to this particular story this movie is trying to tell.

Even in 1975, Jack Nicholson was starting to slowly morph into "Jack", the goofy version of his persona that we're used to seeing sitting court side at Staples Center (or the Crypto Arena, or whatever it's going to be called in the next three years).  He wouldn't go full SHINING for another five years, but he's also already a slight notch up from the controlled performance he gives in CHINATOWN.  

However, I think Jack's unique aura pays off here, and it's not surprising that he coasted his way to his first Academy Award (although I personally might have given it to Pacino that year for his performance in DOG DAY AFTERNOON).  What I think really helps balance him out is that he's giving these impassioned monologues and speeches to stone-faced observers much of the time.  Whether it's Ratched, Chief, or any of the other tenants of the unnamed institution, most people respond to McMurphy's impassioned pleas by doing nothing at all, at least until they do.  It's no mistake, then, that one of the best scenes in the whole dang picture is the scene where McMurphy attempts to rustle up votes to get the World Series put on TV, an example of the movie's subversive humorous streak that pops up a lot.

Speaking of Ratched, I'd say we need to talk about Louise Fletcher.  Except I don't think there's anything else I can bring to the table that hasn't been said already since the movie's release.  It's the clear high mark of her career; there may be no one-off role that is so clearly intertwined with its performer, even these 45-odd years later.  And there's a reason she's endured; there may be no greater metaphor for the cold, unfeeling nature of the system than her.  She was a no-brainer for her Oscar as well, beating out such iconic performances such as Ann-Margret in TOMMY. 

And may I say that there's such a glorious lack of context for Ratched.  She just is.  It's why I continue to actively avoid that blasted Sarah Paulson prequel series.  I'm sure she's great!  But I don't really need to know Ratched's origin.  I'm barely interested in knowing her first name (I don't think the movie ever says?).  It informs nothing to my understanding of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST and, in fact, threatens to do real damage to it.  Also, I don't have AMC Plus or whatever.  Anyway.

Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention "Chief" (played by Will Sampson), the titular one who flies over the cuckoo's nest, who the movie might secretly be really about.  After all, he's the one who eventually gets out, the one who is the most changed for having been in McMurphy's presence.  And Sampson plays it so beautifully, all interiority until he finally makes his move in the final scene.  It was kinda insane to learn that, prior to CUCKOO'S NEST, the guy was a rodeo performer.  "Chief" was his first real film role.  He'd work for another decade or so before passing away in 1987.

Oh, and Scatman Crothers is in this!  I wasn't aware that THE SHINING would serve as a reunion of sorts between the Scatman and the Jackman.  Cool stuff.  

And, of course, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST counts as a Christmas movie.

Of course, the movie went on to also win Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture (a nominee pool, by the way, that stands as maybe the best ever: ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, BARRY LYNDON, JAWS, DOG DAY AFTERNOON and NASHVILLE.  Not a single miss there, I don't think), completing "the Big Five", something that only IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT before it and THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS after it have ever done.  

That very short list has always struck me as interesting, as there's an inherent implication that these are three of the very best films Hollywood has ever produced (which is wildly debatable).  But, there's also so different from each other, and would make for a very schizophrenic triple feature.  I think it's proof positive that Oscar victories tend to be about momentum more than anything else.  If you can tap into something that audiences and industry professionals didn't realize they were eager to explore, who knows what could happen?  I'm just surprised it's been over thirty years since it happened again.  Although a quick glance of the most recent movies that had a shot at it is, uh, not encouraging; LA LA LAND, AMERICAN HUSTLE and SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK all secured the needed nominations in the last decade.

Yeah, maybe this is a record we don't need to be breaking anytime soon.