One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Milos Forman
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
It Happened One Night in 1934—is more than a superlative human drama. It is, on a broader level, one of the seminal works of its time in that it keenly reflects the systematic stifling of individuality within post-World War II American society.
The year is 1963, and Randall Patrick McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) is a new patient in a mental ward. He has been sent there from a prison work farm because he is a nonconformist, and so the authorities, having labelled him "belligerent," "resentful" and "lazy," want to evaluate him and determine if he is mentally ill.
McMurphy's "problem" is that he is a logic-minded individual in a society ruled by bureaucratic illogic. McMurphy dares to think for himself, and question authority. He resists taking his medication, and makes a perfectly rational declaration to Mildred Ratched (Louise Fletcher), the ward's head nurse: "I don't like the idea of taking something if I don't know what it is." Her immediate response— "Don't get upset, Mr. McMurphy"—mirrors the manner in which those in power will pigeonhole the individual who questions the rules. Of course, McMurphy does not belong in a mental ward, but his objection to blind authority makes him as much a threat to society as the worst kind of sociopath. "He's not crazy," one of the hospital doctors tellingly observes at one point, "but he's dangerous."
The situation on Nurse Ratched's ward goes directly against McMurphy's nature. His fellow patients are compliant and spiritless. They lack individuality, and are so drugged out on medication that their emotions are warped and exaggerated. The two key ones are Billy Bibbit (Brad Dourif), who incessantly stutters, and Chief Bromden (Will Sampson), a towering Indian who is presented as being deaf and dumb. McMurphy eventually learns that many of the men are self-committed, and have the freedom to leave at any time they choose. In other words, they have been so repressed by society that they have willingly accepted their fate.
The mental ward in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest serves as a metaphor for American society, the point being that citizens are inmates of that society. They are expected to conform, by fitting in as members of a status quo. Even more specifically, as a mirror of post-World War II America, the scenario depicts a specific point in history where conformity was encouraged and free-thinking was a perilous endeavor.
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