REVIEW: One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (Released in 1975) [45th Anniversary]

DIRECTOR: Milos Forman

PRODUCERS: Michael Douglas & Saul Zanetz

WRITERS: Bo Goldman & Lawrence Hauben

PERFORMERS: Jack Nicholson Louise Fletcher William Redfield Brad Dourif Sydney Lassick Christopher Lloyd Danny DeVito Dean Brooks William Duell Viincent Schiavelli Michael Berryman Mayra Small Scatman Crothers Phil Roth Louisa Moritz

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a rather strange but interesting character study film. It' about a repeated offender who checks into a mental institution for a more relaxed environment than one would receive in prison. Once he gets there things start to change and pretty soon it's a battle of wills between the mentally sane and the psychiatric system. The most interesting thing about that is how far one person goes for others, not just himself and in the process changes the lives of the people around him. This was one particular film that had me questioning just how certain patients spend their days when they're confined to a hospital for the psychiatric and mentally ill.

During the 60's and 70's, Jack Nicholson was a rising star with a few classics and a few Oscar nominations to his name it seemed like there just wasn't nothing this guy couldn't do. In this film, he proved he could pull off a performance as an offender turned reluctant hero as he challenges the status quo of the hospital staff under the leadership of a strict and hardened nurse played by Louise Fletcher who takes no prisoners when it comes to keeping her patients under control. In fact, she's so strict that if things aren't played by the rules she gets very pushy and demanding that you almost don't know whether to take her side or side with the patients. Nicholson's character comes into the picture and he's not so used to the rules and regulations set by Fletcher and sets out to break her control over everything. Just watching these two go toe-to-toe with each other is both dramatic and heart pounding. In one scene, Nicholson tries to get several patients to vote to see a ballgame and he's going to all extremes to get everyone on board, just when all hope seems lost he improvises a ballgame for the patients even though the TV is off. This sends Fletcher over the edge and demands the commotion be stopped. Fletcher really commands every scene she's in, even when her character is at her worst. You see her running a facility and she's not used to being defied and when she is you see her unravel (LUKE 10:17-18 NIV).

Now I had seen this film only twice, the first time it was very hard for me to follow. I didn't know who was who or why they were the way they were, I only saw nurses and patients and for whatever reason I didn't know what the story was really all about. Having watched it recently, I saw it from a more clearer perspective. I saw a single man challenging the status quo and changing so many lives in doing so, even the hospital employees saw what he was doing yet they still opposed it. He gave them something they haven't had in such a long time and when you're a mental patient living in a confined facility, you have little to no options in the outside world. But Nicholson here challenges that in a way you've either never seen before or not used to seeing. I know I'm not used to seeing him as the reluctant hero in a story unless it's Chinatown (1974) where he played a Private Investigator. Here you actually see him as more of a revolutionary of mental hospitals who's just looking for a quick and easy way out, but ends up having his work cut out for him when he sees how mistreated the patients are treated and decides to stand up to the staff when no one else does, getting several followers when he does. In the Bible, Jesus got his first disciples when he asked them to drop their fishing nets and follow him and they became fishers of lost souls (MARK 1:16-18 NIV). Here, Nicholson gains his followers through reason and even at one point, sailing on a boat and fishing for fish and by the end of that trip, they actually come back with some. That moment immediately reminded me of that story because Nicholson did more than just bring the patients out of their mental prisons within their own minds, he taught them to think for themselves in a environment where independent thinking was not allowed just as Jesus taught people to be more devoted to God rather than the world itself.

This film makes me so glad that I didn't check or admit myself into a mental hospital because God knows what I'd have to put up with in that place day after day if I did. I've had my bouts with Depression and Loneliness but they were never to the point where I needed to be in those kinds of places. Seeing this however, opened me up to what life in an institution is really like and what it means to stand above the authoritative figures who use their power for the pleasure of intimidation and abuse it for their own gain. Although this isn't on my list of liked films, it's definitely a keeper in the greatest of all time lists. Both Nicholson and Fletcher respectively won Oscars for their performances in this film for Best Actor and Best Actress in 1976. It's been a long time since that's happened for two performers to win Oscars for the same movie and I find that to be quite interesting. It also took home 3 other awards for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director (Milos Forman) and Best Picture of the Year. Now I know why, because it made people see Cuckoo for what it really is, while taking a deeper look into a world that's not often looked at these days. We'll never have anything as Cuckoo as this and perhaps never will again. Happy 45th Anniversary to One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and keep flying, just don't don't go Cuckoo!

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