Storytelling that Imprisons

Rating: Null/10 (30 December 2002)

Spoilers herein.
This film is hypnotic. The actors lead with skill, Nicholson is just right, the story is very accessible and the combination hits home. Why should I be unhappy?
Because I know the book. Now, I have no illusion about books and translation into film. But it bothers me when I think about why I am drawn into this film, and the book helps me understand why.
Kesey's work was from the perspective of the damaged mind of the Indian. It was Nabokovian in dealing with created realities, realities that did not exist but were confabulated as an artifact of us entering some diseased eye. The whole point was there is no anchor of right and wrong.
Forman is a talented storyteller, but before he is an artist, he is a Czech. And Czechs (at least in those days) live in only one world: a world where some forces in society unjustly imprison the rest in ways that imprison all. It is a real world, a dark broken world illuminated only by brief flashes of tenacious individualism. Self-immolation. Svankmajer stuff -- check him out.

The problem with this vision of 1975 is that it uses the very same techniques it rails against: there really is a good -- it says -- there really is an institutional bad in Forman's world. Cartoonish films are as common as grass, but this one rankles. The institution of Hollywood selfishly changed the ambiguous, morally shifting world of Kesey into a simple morality play knowing that we would be hypnotized with its very clarity. Shame I say -- where's the sink?
You want fine Nicholson? You'll find him in the ambiguous, multilayered Chinatown.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 4: Has some interesting elements.