Plot summary
Randle McMurphy is sent to a mental institution after serving a short sentence on a prison farm for statutory rape of a 15 year old. McMurphy is faking his mental illness to avoid doing hard labour for his crimes. After arriving at the institution he meets Nurse Ratched , who subtly suppresses the actions of her patients through a passive-aggressive routine, intimidating and manipulating them. Randle befriends the patients in the ward which includes the anxious, stuttering Billy Bibbit; Charlie Cheswick, who is prone to childish tantrums; delusional Martini; the paranoid Dale Harding; belligerent Max Taber; epileptic Jim Sefelt; and “Chief” Bromden, a tall Native American who is believed to be deaf and mute. Nurse Ratched soon begins to realise McMurphy's vibrant, lively personality which she feels threatens her authoritarian figure in the ward and so begins to ration the patients foods and confiscates their cigarettes. McMurphy rebels against Ratched by stealing a hospital bus, escaping with several patients to go on a fishing trip, encouraging them to become more self-confident. Later in the film Randle realises that his sentence in the mental institution may be indefinite because he needs to be evaluated for his supposed illness, and so plots to escape with Chief. He, Chief and Cheswick get into a fight with the nurses as Cheswick gets agitated over his confiscated cigarettes. Ratched sends them to the “shock shop,” and McMurphy discovers Chief can actually speak, feigning his illness to avoid engaging with anyone. Subjected to electroconvulsive therapy, McMurphy returns to the ward pretending to be lobotomised but reveals the treatment hasn't affected him at all. Later McMurphy sneaks two women, Candy and Rose, into the ward and bribes the night guard and later throws a party before he and Chief escape. McMurphy convinces Billy to have sex with Candy while the other patients drink, the next morning Nurse Ratched arrives to find the majority of the patients unconscious including McMurphy. Nurse Ratched discovers Billy and Candy together, now free of his stutter, until Ratched threatens to inform his mother. Billy is overwhelmed with fear and locks himself in the doctor’s office and commits suicide. McMurphy enraged by this attacks and chokes Ratched before being knocked unconscious by an orderly. Nurse Ratched returns to the ward in a neck brace whereas McMurphy hasn't returned and rumours have spread that he has escaped, but during the night Chief sees McMurphy being returned to his bed. He discovers McMurphy has lobotomy scars on his forehead , Chief kills McMurphy with a pillow and finally escapes through the window by throwing a hydrotherapy cart and is cheered on by Taber.
My Personal Opinion On The Film
From my perspective after watching this film, I think that it is well acted and is convincing as they truly convey mental patients. The diegetic sounds in the film portray the true action that would occur in mental institutions and captures the reality of the patients lives. The non diegetic sounds, such as the incidental music makes some scenes more emotionally heightened for example -when Billy commits suicide and when we begin to realise chief can actually speak also the camera works in the film heightens our emotions for example when McMurphy is having electrotherapy a close up shot is used so we can only witness his pain and we are fixated on his face throughout this scene.
Roger Ebert Review on One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest
The movie's simplistic approach to mental illness is not really a fault of the movie, because it has no interest in being about insanity. It is about a free spirit in a closed system. Nurse Ratched, who is so inflexible, so unseeing, so blandly sure she is right, represents excessive attachment to or domination by ones mother at its radical extreme, and McMurphy is one who wants to break loose from her version of civilization. The movie is among other things profoundly fearful of women; the only two portrayed positively are McMurphy's friends Candy and Rose. His characters stand for freedom, anarchy, self-gratification and bucking the system, and often they also stand for generous friendship and a kind of careworn nobility.
