Solid

Rating: 8/10 (2 May 2010)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a movie about a mental patient named R.P McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), who fakes being crazy so that he can avoid doing manual labor in prison. Although this is the setting for the movie, the actual theme is that of a person, McMurphy (Mac), providing better therapy to the patients of a mental institute than the doctors or nurses can provide. The story focuses primarily on Mac as is tries to lure each of the patients out of their comfort zones and into life. As Mac does this he becomes a larger than life hero in the eyes of the mental patients, and a thorn in the side of Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher). Ratched has a harmful, narcissistic need for control.
Overall, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest does an excellent job of setting the mood for a mental institute both in the sound and visual department. The institute itself is run down and feels as though money is tight for upgrades. This really brightens Mac's colorful personality, and sets a nice contrast. Often times the dialogue is just a bunch of chaos because the mental patients get into argument frenzies. These arguments help give the feel of a mental institute, while also allowing the camera to zoom in and capture Mac or Nurse Ratched's feelings about the given situations. All of the above, along with realistic lighting, great camera work, and terrific acting won the movie its Oscars.
Irony plays a large role in why One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was and still is successful. There are quite a few situations of irony, with the main two coming from Nurse Ratched's need to control, and the "surprise ending". As mentioned in the theme, this movie focuses on how well Mac helps the patients in the mental institute. As a sharp contrast though is how much Nurse Ratched, the helper, is harming her patients with manipulation and brow beating. As for the surprise ending, well, that will be left a surprise.
This movie is not unlike others that have come along, in which the main character takes hold of a group supposedly doing the right thing, but were not. Most recently we saw a similar character in How to Train Your Dragon. In How to Train Your Dragon, Hiccup, a young Viking, teaches the other Vikings that the dragons are good when it was common belief they were bad. Hiccup is being manipulated and brow beaten by society and especially by his father to kill dragons. It's not hard to see the similarities between Hiccup and Mac, or Nurse Ratched and Hiccup's father. It's an entertaining theme, watching one sole character change an entire group for the better. It is a universal theme that movie goers will enjoy for years to come, no better example of this theme is found than in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
I would find it unfair to a reader not to mention this; although this movie is a good one it suffers from a pacing standpoint. This movie's middle section is not unlike an action movie. What I mean by this is that in action movies, sometimes there is so much action that the viewer gets bored. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest the middle portion of the movie is filled with crazy people acting crazy to the point of exhaustion. If you can get over this, or find amusement in it, then this movie will surely entertain.