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Analysis of? One Flew Over the Cuckoo? s Nest? Every sixty minutes, when the clock strikes the hour, the cuckoo bird of a cuckoo clock will come out of its hiding place and herald the time with it? s chirping of? cuckoo!
cuckoo! ? In the film, Nurse Ratched and her assistant, like clockwork, call the patients to form a line and receive their medication. Everything has to follow a certain order for Nurse Ratched and those who don? t conform are dealt with severely. But the poor treatment of mental patients is not the message that Milo?
Forman wishes to convey in the film. It is that our rigid and conformist society punishes and mistreats those who go against the system. Randall Mc Murphy, as played by Jack Nicholson, is the ultimate non-conformist, having been sent to prison for crimes such as rape. When he arrives at the mental institution, he turns Nurse Ratched? s organized, predictable system on its head by gambling, proposing to watch the World Series on television, and even taking the patients on an impromptu, and unauthorized fishing trip. All of this, of course, annoys and disturbs Nurse Ratched to no end.
Always dressed in pristine whites, not a hair out of place and her eyebrows perfectly plucked, her rigid control and unwillingness to be flexible to the needs and desires of the patients, represent the majority of society who is not willing to accept radical changes and ostracizes all those who try to introduce them. A third faction of society is represented in the character of Big Chief, a seemingly deaf-mute Indian giant. Big Chief represents all those who see the injustices and mistreatment in society but say nothing because they don? t want to get involved. The fact that Mc Murphy the rebel, draws him out and encourages him to first participate in the basketball game, then to actually speak, shows that many people keep quiet and conform until they just can? t take it anymore.
The film is rife with symbolism, and director Forman keeps the atmosphere consistent. By keeping most of the film within the walls of the mental institution, he reinforces the caged-bird feeling that most of the patients have. Unlike most films, music is used very sparingly, most of the time only when Nurse Ratched plays the annoying record that she claims the older patients want. The quiet that haunts most of the screen time somehow conveys the sanitized atmosphere that the patients live in.
Later in the film we learn that most of the patients are in fact there on a voluntary basis and are not really troubled psychologically, but rather emotionally. The squirrel on the barbed wire is symbolic of this sub-theme. A squirrel collects nuts, and? nuts? is a colloquial term for mentally ill.
By placing the squirrel on the fence, the movie challenges us to examine just where the line between sanity and insanity is drawn. And more disturbingly, who draws it? Although it might be said by some that the outdoor fishing expedition seems totally out of place in a film that is supposed to convey confinement and constraint, it serves to show that these seemingly hopeless patients can break free from the unbending social institutions that have caged them in and written them off. The sea itself has always symbolized openness, freedom, and a kind of uncertainty towards what is out there. By bringing the other patients out and showing them the great expanse of the sea, Mc Murphy somehow liberates them and proves that they don? t have to stay locked up and subject to the will of Nurse Ratched.
Ironically, Mc Murphy is in the end unable to break free from Nurse Ratched and those who are like her. After all the commotion of the escape attempt, Billy blames Mc Murphy for what happened, then subsequently kills himself because of Nurse Ratched? s threats to tell his mother. As punishment for his role in the fracture of the order of Nurse Ratched? s domain, represented by the stained glass of the nurse? s station and the dirtied white cap of Nurse Ratched, Mc Murphy is lobotomized and his spirit is quelled.
Big Chief, who was drawn out of his silence by Mc Murphy, is moved to euthanize Mc Murphy. For him, Mc Murphy no longer had any spirit and dignity, and it was better for him to die than to live his life as a vegetable. After this, Big Chief proceeds to wrench the hydrotherapy console from the floor, break the glass window and escape, something Mc Murphy attempted to do before but couldn? t. The story in itself is not fodder for Hollywood action blockbusters, with its spare but meaningful dialogue and minimal number of sets. But it is engaging because of the complex characters, who are all so different from one another that if you closed your eyes, you would still be able to tell who was talking.
The relationships that each of the characters have with one another are also very distinct and it is interesting to watch because of the way they relate to each other helped by the superb acting by the whole cast. Jack Nicholson is, as always, on the dot and seems to really take on the persona of Mc Murphy, helped maybe by his image as a rebel in real life. He constantly keeps you guessing as to whether Mc Murphy is really insane or not. Louise Fletcher, who seems to have disappeared from the Hollywood scene, has the rare ability, like Nicholson, to convey a thousand words with one pointed stare and this is a good thing since Nurse Ratched isn? t really given many lines in the film. Overall, Milos Forman crafts a wonderful film from Ken Key?
s novel. Each aspect of the film, from the script, to the cinematography, to the acting, was deftly handled and (probably) meticulously planned and executed by Forman. The theme is itself timeless, making the message of the movie appealing to people from all generations. It has parallels to the life of Jesus Christ, killed because he was bucking the old Jewish system, and Matthew Shephard, the teenager killed by his classmates about two years ago because he was gay.
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