Botched Medium

Rating: 1/10 (19 March 2004)

I am kicking myself for being so unobservant. Films, books, and plays are three different art forms and 'Cuckoo's Nest' has the (mis)fortune of existing in all three stages. None are good examples of their respective forms.
Books are plot-driven, requiring the right mix of story with dialog. Actually, dialog isn't necessary to make a popular book as Tom Clancy and John Grisham have demonstrated.
Films are visually-driven. When a film relies too much on the mechanics of books, they fail. Why have the Clancy and Grisham adaptations faded so quickly? Because the directors start with a story and then try to visualize it as best as they can while cutting out the guts of the book (the plot)...probably why the #1 comment is "the book was better". Thus a good film, in the visual sense, needs little dialog and even bad dialog can work. Ang Lee, Ridley Scott, and Stanley Kubrick proved that. These three start with visuals then use plot as an excuse for the vision, that's how they get away with clichés.
Plays are entirely dialog-driven, requiring mastery of language to create and perform. What works in books and films can fail because we take out the scene imagination of the audience in exchange for verbal imagination. The two don't mix.
Well, 'Cuckoo's Nest' (book, play, and film) is nothing unique. Remember that Kesey wrote his book after Heller's 'Catch-22' and the film adaptation likewise followed Nichols' better attempt. We can see that if Heller hadn't succeeded this would never have been made. No one would have been interested in another examination of insanity, but this doesn't even have the clever manipulation of either the narrator or language.
In this particular case, the failure falls on Forman. Dialog and acting are pointless in this medium, especially Nicholson since his "method acting" here is no different than the Joker. Another problem is the emotionless images. This isn't the calculated coldness of Kubrick, just sloppy filmmaking. Perhaps this should not have been attempted at all...
My advice, compare this to that year's 'Barry Lyndon' to understand when adaptations take advantage of the different mediums. The problem with America is that we make everyone verbally literate and then expect them to go to movies with the same mentality. If we raise future generations to be visually literate then this movie would disappear. That's our dilemma: Hollywood vs. Education.
Final Analysis = = Cinematic Dud