Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the
Cuckoo’s Nest remains grandly entertaining viewing, with a pumped-up tonal
unity that certainly wasn’t inevitable for such a project. With that stipulated, a
detailed consideration of the film tends to turn into a pile of objections
(some of them, admittedly, clearer now than they might have been at the time). It’s
not necessarily a drawback if the conception of the institution shaken up by Jack
Nicholson’s Randle McMurphy seems based in vaguely grotesque theatre more than clinical
fidelity (it’s telling that the subsequent highpoints for many of the actors
came either in horror or comedy), even if one never gains a coherent sense of
how the place actually works. But within those parameters, the details of
many of the characterizations still leaves one uneasy, such as McMurphy’s girlfriend (if
that’s the right word), perpetually available to do his bidding, including having sex with other men. Nicholson’s best actor award seems as
inevitable as it must have then, even if the performance is dotted with signs
of pending excess and self-caricature; Louise Fletcher’s Oscar for best actress
though must be one of the most generous in the history of the awards, her role
as Nurse Ratched clearly a supporting one (if the distinction means anything at all)
both in terms of screen time, and more importantly within the film’s structure
and emphases. The central theme of the institutional stifling of an
uproariously non-conforming individual still drives the film, but the mechanics
of the ending leave one uneasy (the sadistic take-down of Brad Dourif’s
forelorn character; the tasteless rush of pleasure presumably intended to
accompany McMurphy’s subsequent murderous lunge at Ratched; the lumbering final
image of freedom, with Will Sampson’s “Chief” smashing through the window and
running into the sunset). Still, despite these and other caveats, you mostly
submit to the film’s defiant, propulsive grandeur.
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