Review: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Milos Forman, 1975)

Released in 1975, Milos Forman's staggering film of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (adapted from Ken Kesey's equally brilliant semi-autobiographical 1962 novel) remains arguably the most relevant, accurate and powerful cinematic analysis of mental illness and corruption of power ever. It became just the second film ever to win the five major Academy Awards and was shown in Swedish cinemas for 12 years, which remains a national record in Sweden. Yet at the time the critical reception of the movie was still rather uneven (though deservedly that's improved over time), and Kesey vehemently refused to watch it as the story wasn't told from the point of view of Chief Bromden like it is in the novel.




But what a film it is. After fighting for more than a decade to get the film made, producers Saul Zaentz and Michael Douglas (largely influenced by his father Kirk, who first acquired the film rights) had developed a strong affection for the story and once they had the financing they hired Czech director Milos Forman, the only director they encountered who shared their affection for Kesey's story. It isn't hard to see why, and as Forman spent the majority of his formative years and the early part of his career living under a totalitarian regime in Czechoslovakia after losing his parents in Auschwitz and Buchenwald as a child, Forman proved to be the perfect director to bring to the screen this story of silenced and very often misunderstood people existing in such circumstances who are slowly inspired to take a stand. Forman's direction is a thing of sheer mastery: tender yet honest in the sequences involving McMurphy's (Jack Nicholson) relationship with his fellow patients, raw in the sequences revolving around Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), a usually calm but unknowingly corrupt and dictatorial woman who thinks she's doing what's in her patients' best interests and how she runs the ward and treats her patients, unflinching but sympathetic in its depiction of the ravages mental illnesses inflict on those who suffer from them, and all those qualities in the emotionally draining yet tremendously inspiring climax. Forman simply outdid himself here.
But of course, every director is only as good (or bad) as the cast and crew they have to work with, and Forman's is flawless. Starting with the cast, he garners three of the most perfect displays of acting in cinematic history. McMurphy was the role Nicholson was born to play, and while he's a force of nature in the scenes involving McMurphy squaring off with Nurse Ratched, his more subtle scenes where he depicts the changes that the institution and his fellow patients in whom he provoked a change first are the ones that truly assure him a place among the true all-time legends (and the fact that he and Forman had a fiery relationship just makes his turn even more unbelievable). He's never been better before or since, and as brilliant as Al Pacino is in Dog Day Afternoon I'm firmly in Team McMurphy. Fletcher is every bit as good as the sadistic Nurse Ratched who tries to clip the free-spirited McMurphy's wings – it's an incredibly controlled performance, because while a lesser actress would have played her like an overbearing battleaxe, Fletcher is chilling because of her sincerity. Yet even despite how truly frightening Fletcher is she also manages to make the viewer feel a small amount of sympathy for Nurse Ratched by simultaneously playing her as a woman who's really just trying to do her job even though she's oblivious to the negative impact she's had on those in her care. Also, Brad Dourif pulls off one of the most astounding supporting turns in movie history as Billy Bibbitt, a stuttering (and thus exploited) teenager who proves to be the catalyst for Nurse Ratched's downfall at the hands of McMurphy, and William Redfield (who sadly died shortly after the movie was released) and Sydney Lassick are also superb as the schizophrenic Harding and bipolar Cheswick.
Bo Goldman and Laurence Hauben's screenplay is one of the few that, I think it can be said, against which most others are measured. With great eloquence, insight, power and intelligence (and no cheese or sentimentality) they collectively crafted a screenplay that never waters down the ugly things that are mental illnesses, gives the viewer/reader a greater understanding of the effects (both negative and also positive) they have on those who suffer from them and also what causes corruption, it celebrates the rebels of the world who fight the establishment for the greater good as well as themselves, and perhaps most importantly it shows the mentally ill not as not as complete caricatures (because often such depictions of the mentally ill are, it must be said, accurate ones), but as people who can achieve anything (even if they need a little guidance).
Two other enormous bright spots are Jack Nitzsche's amazing score which is somehow mesmerizing in its musical simplicity (and it surely would've scooped the movie's sixth Oscar had Jaws come out in any other year) and Haskell Wexler's beautifully evocative cinematography.
Countless similar films before and since have explored rebellion against corrupt authority figures and the inner workings of the human mind what makes us all tick, but One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest will forever be the cinematic depiction of life in a "loony bin" (as McMurphy puts it) to end them all. After more than thirty years it remains an absolutely flawless, definitive, knockout masterpiece, and one of the five most deserving Best Picture Oscar winners of all. And is that the greatest climax of a Best Picture winner ever or is that the greatest climax of a Best Picture winner ever?