The Ultimate Backfire

Rating: 10/10 (15 January 2009)

It took a dozen years for One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest to make it to the big screen from Broadway. In 1962 Kirk Douglas made his one and only return to Broadway to star as Randall P. McMurphy on stage with Joan Tetzel as his nemesis, nurse Ratched. Douglas bought the screen rights, but by the time anyone was interested in doing the film version, Kirk was too old for the part.
That may have been a break for the movie fans because as much as I like Kirk Douglas, I can't see anyone but Jack Nicholson doing this role as the free spirited McMurphy. McMurphy's a low level career criminal type who statutorily raped a girl as he put it '15 going on 35'. He decides to fake a crazy act while in prison to get out of the work farm he's assigned to.
So Nicholson's goes to the mental hospital where he meets an odd assortment of people whom he discovers voluntarily checked themselves in there, mainly because it's easier to stay there and not take all your psychological baggage into society. That's a crucial difference that Nicholson finds out the hard way, his new friends most of them can pack up and leave anytime they want. He's sent there by the state and the state determines when he's ready to go even if it's past the allotted jail time he was sentenced to.
The state in this case is Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched, one of the great Dickensian names ever given a movie character. Louise is the ultimate control freak and these people who've shut themselves away from life are her ultimate tools. When Nicholson comes in, he hasn't given up on life like the rest of these poor souls, he becomes a threat to Fletcher's little empire.
It's hard to believe that such a smart guy like McMurphy would not have known the rules about commitment. Still it doesn't detract a bit from the overall quality of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.
Though the topic is not a fixed one to any era, the script does leave many oblique references to the Sixties in the film. The electroshock treatment and the lobotomy operations depicted here were by 1975 no longer in use. They were pretty barbaric and the mental health profession discarded these, but not before too many lives were shattered with them.
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest swept the main Oscar categories, it won for Best Picture, Best Director for Milos Forman, Best Actor for Jack Nicholson, Best Actress for Louise Fletcher and Best Adapted Screenplay to Lawrence Hauban and Bo Goldman. Brad Dourif was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, but he lost to George Burns in The Sunshine Boys.
Louise Fletcher never got the career mileage she should have for playing Nurse Ratched. It took her years, but she did get another career role in television as the ruler of Bejor, Kai Winn on Star Trek Deep Space Nine.
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is one timeless classic, it will be popular a millenia from now.