"What do you think you are, crazy? Well, you're not!"

Rating: 9/10 (6 January 2003)

Whether intentional or not, "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" was a sign of
the times when it came out in 1975. It reflected the anti-authoritarian sensibility of Americans in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Director Milos Forman's
taste for subversion is said to come from his war-torn childhood, his parentless upbringing, and finally, the rise of Communism in his native Czechoslovakia.

The film's imitators, many and poor, have tried to duplicate its formula,
practically inventing a new genre--the mental hospital drama--probably because of the opportunities for over-acting. An actor's favorite role to play is a mentally disadvantaged person. But Jack Nicholson's character, McMurphy, everyone
agrees, is not sick at all. Some of "Cuckoo"'s imitators didn't understand that the film isn't about crazy people, but about rules, suppression of the soul, and the desire for power.
As McMurphy emerges as a leader among the patients, a battle of wills forms
between he and Nurse Ratched. At first McMurphy is just having fun. He
operates on the belief that few of these men are actually crazy. Of course, it works for a time. Eventually it has tragic consequences.

Forman would re-visit the anti-authoritarian themes of "Cuckoo's Nest" in
"People vs. Larry Flynt" and "Ragtime." His apparent identification with mad geniuses was carried on with "Amadeus" and "Man on the Moon."