Top Movies #17

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

“But I tried, didn't I? Goddamnit, at least I did that.” – McMurphy

There is a comical scene in the first half of the film where McMurphy, played by Jack Nicholson, takes bets on whether he can lift a stand-alone sink anchored to the floor. The psychiatric patients who are sensible enough evaluate the proposal insist that he cannot do it. He tries real hard though. He tries so hard that all the patients begin to believe that he might actually do it. Of course he fails, but that is not the point. He tried, and in doing so he motivates this ragtag group of social misfits and timid outcasts to stand up for themselves and renew their inner spirit. It is time for all of them to enjoy life a little bit more. Nurse Ratchet is the antagonist to this group. Her special brand of fascist order is at odds with McMurphy’s free-spirited philosophy.
The movie is one part an argument to resist the softening nature of conformatism, and one part comedy. The patients all have their own little quirks and deficiencies. Over the course of the movie, McMurphy’s brand of therapy seems to work where Nurse Ratchet’s has failed. Billy, the stuttering, painfully shy young man played by Brad Dourif, can speak without a stutter, and the giant Native American man who has feigned deaf and dumb to everyone at the hospital, opens up to McMurphy about his secret. Many of the others gain the confidence to stand up for their simple liberties, liberties that Nurse Ratchet is so determined to restrict.

McMurphy is a curious character. He doesn’t act crazy enough to be kept in the psychiatric hospital: many of the doctors believe he is faking it. Yet, he is not rational enough to be accepted outside. McMurphy acknowledges this. There is a scene at the end of the film where McMurphy is free to escape the hospital, but he doesn’t. He stays knowing that, by doing so, he has sealed his tragic fate.

What’s interesting about the film’s challenging ending is what Chief’s act of mercy means for the patients. For the patients so positively influenced by McMurphy’s philosophies, to see him in a vegetative, lobotomized state would undoubtedly regress them back to their more timid selves. So Chief’s suffocation of McMurphy is an act of kindness for the man, and an act of protection for the patients of the ward.

I am personally really moved by the scene where McMurphy takes the patients out fishing. My father works at an adolescent treatment center for children his psychiatric disorders. He used to run an outdoors program, very successfully, for many years. The provincial government decided this was too dangerous and shut the program down. They used to go to the pool, but that was also deemed too risky. Now these kids mostly just sit inside and play video games; this is hardly therapeutic. The real tragedy is that the closest these kids ever got to feeling normal, like kids, was when they were outside, working together to meet common goals. The benefits of the program are unmistakeable. So as dangerous as McMurphy’s fishing boat hijacking may have been, I understand his intent. The patients all look like they had the time of their lives.