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One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest Customer Reviews (25 - 27 of 52 Reviews)

He has been sent to prison for statutory rape, but he's not particularly remorseful about it because the girl looked and acted older and wanted it. We should be appalled by McMurphy's attitude, yet Nicholson plays him pretty much the way Kesey wrote him, and we sympathize with him.

McMurphy has earned a trip to the state mental hospital by acting "a little nuts" and you recognize by watching that McMurphy is the kind of guy who would not hesitate to "act a little nuts" to get off of the hard manual labor of a state pen chain-gang. But at this mental hospital McMurphy runs up against his worst nightmare: Louise Fletcher's Nurse Ratched.

Louise Fletcher earned her best actress Oscar in one of the most methodically unsympathetic roles in silver screen history. Nurse Ratched pretends to have the best interests of the patients in mind, yet she is obviously subtly manipulating not only the patients, but also the remainder of the hospital staff to maintain an iron rod of control over her little corner of the universe. Crossing Nurse Ratched is a certain path to disaster for those who are in her sphere.

McMurphy and Ratched cross swords over and over. It could have become boring or depressing, but we are entertained repeatedly by McMurphy's ingenious or bravura attempts to one-up Nurse Ratched. Yet SHE is the one who has the power in this universe, and I could only marvel at her as she cold-heartedly crushes the life from McMurphy and the other patients.

If ever Academy Awards were given out for "Best Supporting Cast", this one would have taken that one as well.
A film for the ages.

Great Movie
THE MOVIE ITSELF:
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the one authentically great movie Milos Foreman has ever made (and he has been imitating it ever since). Anyone familiar with the book will recognize that Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher do not look anything like the descriptions of their characters, and yet they capture the spirit of those characters perfectly. The action has been moved forward in time fifteen years to 1975. This is one of Nicholson's best performances. The movie has an objective, documentary feel to it. We miss out on some characterization because of this (especially the Chief's) but instead we get a sense of what it would be like in a real institution. Despite the subject-matter, it is very funny and has moments of true joy. It is a marvelous piece of 70's filmmaking and ranks as #12 on the IMDB Greatest Movies list. Definitely worth owning.

THE DVD'S:
The DVD's were made from a new transfer so they look and sound terrific. Unfortunately, it is a 2-DVD set, but all of the information could have easily fit on one disc. The only things on the second disc are some deleted scenes and a making-of documentary. The documentary is good, but not great. It tells of how Kirk Douglas first discovered the book and tried to make a movie out of it, but not of the friction when his son Michael (the film's producer) told him he was too old to be in it. There is also no mention of the film's success and its sweep of all the top Oscars. They don't even talk about novelist Ken Kesey (who supposedly was so against the film he still hasn't seen it).

Forman's Foremost
Czech director Milos Forman has a fixation for America. Almost all his films, RAGTIME, MAN IN THE MOON, THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLINT, focus on what he perceives as essential American qualities: its talent, its racism, its perversions, its freedoms, its inventiveness, and, in the case od ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, its strength of spirit. Jack Nicholson's McMurphy is a criminal, and Forman doesn't hide or sweeten this fact. It's his original sin, so to speak. But the world he is cast into is filled with darker sins: brutality, prejudice, ignorance, and inflexibility. McMurphy initially tries to serve just himself, but in his own way, he reaches out to the other inmates. Maybe not with the greatest of patience, he tries to inform the others that they are not crazy and that all is not lost. And he gives them some strengths that they didn't know they possessed

Phenomenal performances are all over the place: Nicholson will forever be inseparable from McMurphy, as Louise Fletcher will always be Nurse Ratched. But the supporting performances were equally stellar. Will Sampson as the sad-eyed hulk, Chief, was exceptional. But for my money, Brad Dourif's Billy Bibbit is the overlooked gem of a performance. He is the pathetic and forlorn stutterer who befriends McMurphy, and, perhaps for that reason, suffers the most. Dourif would turn in any equally powerful performance in Forman's later film, RAGTIME.

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST is an unforgettable film that no film lover's collection can be without. This set, complete with lots of give-me's (I especially enjoyed "The Making of..." portion), is a value at any price.