The film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Milos Forman, 1975) tells the story of Randle Patrick McMurphy, a man society has cast away as a hooligan. In order to avoid being sent to a workhouse, McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) claims insanity and is committed to a mental hospital. He enters a world the likes of which he has never experienced. The ward is commanded by the formidable Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) who rules with an iron fist and a heart of stone. As McMurphy gets to know the other patients in the ward, he begins to see the dark side of the perverted little society shielded from the public by the unrelenting walls of the mental institution. In the film, Forman abstains from nondiegetic sound and portrays the bizarre way of living at the mental hospital in order to critique the total power on which the ward thrives.
During the film, there is almost no sound or music that doesn’t take place in the actual scene. This technique is put in place from the very beginning of the movie. In the opening sequence, the mental hospital is shown deserted and silent. Shot after shot reveal white walls, fluorescent lights, and absolute silence. Already there is a tangible oppression on the ward. Enter Nurse Ratched. Whenever Nurse Ratched is shown in the film, she is an unflinching pillar of order and discipline. Upon arriving at the mental hospital, McMurphy soon realizes the supreme power Ratched has over the other men. They seem to tremble in silent fear of the woman who regulates each and every aspect of their lives. On the rare occasion that Ratched’s power is questioned during the film, it is always met with the same shot. Ratched is alone in the frame, stony-faced, cold, and calculating. The silence echoes her burning eyes and unspoken challenges. Near the beginning of the film, McMurphy believes that he can break the mountain that is Nurse Ratched. “In one week, I can put a bug so far up her ass, she won’t know whether to shit or wind her wristwatch,” he brags to the other patients. Unfortunately, McMurphy’s attempts are met with utter silence.
Life on the ward is something less than a cakewalk. She reigns tyrannically and lets nothing happen without her knowledge and approval. With time, Ratched and the hospital take away all of the men’s simple privileges and rights. After McMurphy organizes a bit of a gambling ring in the washroom, the men lose all of their money and cigarettes to him. In response, Ratched takes all of the cigarettes from the men and rations them. During a memorable scene where Martini (Danny DeVito) has a meltdown and demands his cigarettes, McMurphy takes the initiative that the other men won’t and punches through the glass window of the nurse’s station to retrieve them. Along with denying them of their belongings, Ratched slowly wears down the men’s dignity and self-worth with group therapy sessions. Sitting in a circle, they discuss each man’s inadequacies and the reasons that society has cast them out. She humiliates the men, forcing them to bring their problems before the group and analyze them until she reaches satisfaction. The most glaring example of the twisted hospital life occurred near the end of the film. After McMurphy brought in women and booze for an all-night party, he disappears from the ward for a few weeks. He is returned to his bed in the dead of night as to not wake the other patients. McMurphy’s best friend in the ward, Chief Bromden (Will Sampson), witnesses Mack’s return. Upon approaching the seemingly sleeping man, Bromden sees that McMurphy was given a lobotomy. They couldn’t control his personality so they took it away entirely. That is the true tragedy of the mental hospital.
Between an eerie and unrelenting silence and a horrifying portrayal of life at the mental hospital, the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest casts quite a critique on the society within mental institutions. It shows how personal liberties can be taken away until only the shell of a man remains. Randle Patrick McMurphy tried to bring change to the ward. He tried to teach the men to think for themselves, to get themselves out of the hell they knew as life. Unfortunately, he did not entirely succeed. McMurphy gave the men a taste of how life should be lived, gave them a taste of everything that they were missing. It just wasn’t quite enough.
