Very worthy, but something seems to be missing - realism?

Rating: Null/10 (6 December 2000)

This is a very worthy movie, dealing with the important issue of free will against authority. It's inspiring, humorous and mostly satisfying.
Something rings false though. When is the movie supposed to take place? From the fashions I would guess the 70s, though the book might say different. My (limited) knowledge of working with psychiatric patients indicates that while there did use to be abusive treatment (like electroconvulsive therapy given for the wrong reasons rather than for serious depression) this was over by the 1950s. In particular, nobody got psychosurgery (like poor old Randall) later than the 1950s. Maybe it was different in the US, or maybe I just didn't know about abuses like this. Also, I find it hard to believe that psychiatric patients would be the kind of people who are so beaten down by authority that all they need is to be shown a different way of being to be "cured". It certainly wouldn't be like that nowadays.
If the film is describing the past that's fine, but it seems to me to lose a lot of its power and urgency. However apart from that, everything else was excellent. All the actors were quite outstanding, and Jack Nicholson was awesome. There is one point about three quarters of the way through the movie where the camera is on his face for a long time, maybe 30 seconds, and you watch his expression change through about five emotions on camera (wicked sense of humour, indifference, pain, thoughtfulness and tiredness, or something like). Wow!
The film is extremely highly rated (as well as having won the 5 major oscars), so maybe I'm just out of line in carping about realism.