One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

Before I had watched the film, I only knew that it was about a mental asylum, so I didn’t really know what to expect as I therefore only thought it was going to be about a mental asylum and the patients. Which I then soon after watching the film as I learnt that it was about so much more and the friendships, they all formed with McMurphy, played by Jack Nicholson.

During the film, the plot follows Jack Nicholson’s character in a mental asylum as he builds friendships and slowly brings them all back to life as it becomes clear that the nurses are making them worse and do not tend to treat the patients like human beings. For someone who doesn’t always understand film plots, but I understood this plot and thoroughly enjoyed the story that was presented from McMurphy being transferred from jail to the final scene. The plot itself showing the nurses being the “bad guys” is somewhat believable as I would like to believe that nurses in real life mental asylums do not treat their patients like that but I do believe that people in there would eventually turn into zombie like human. During the film the background music is being presented as classical music and doesn’t really change the whole time to perhaps calm and sooth the patients on the ward.

I completely recommend this film as I really enjoyed this film and would watch it again as I loved watching the friendships grow between McMurphy and chief and martini and Cheswick etc. However, I noticed that when they escaped to go fishing no one noticed until they were actually driving off in the bus. I thought this was one of the bad points of the film as I thought that it wouldn’t genuinely happen in real life, although you could potentially say that about the whole film. On the other hand, I also feel that the fishing scene was one of the best scenes as it was showing the friendships and it even had comedic parts such as when Christopher Lloyd’s character, Taber, jumped onto the boat and ended up hanging off the side.

One scene in particular that I remember and enjoyed was the first circle time type scene when they start to argue and Nurse Retched, portrayed by Louise Fletcher, seemed extremely amused to learn that she was getting inside their heads and clearly wanted them to argue and potentially go even more insane. I also felt during the duration of the film that she was quite condescending pushing them to talk during those particular scenes, it’s even brought up by Cheswick when he asks why she is pushing Billy to answer her questions. During the circle time type scenes I also felt as if it was extremely well shot, for example the majority of the shots were using the rule of thirds and the occasional zoom in and pan which I felt was extremely effective as it was so that the audience was focused on the one character that was being showed. Another scene that I particularly enjoyed was second voting scene when McMurphy walks around the ward with the camera following him in one shot as he moves to each patient asking them to put their hand up so that they can watch the game, which also shows that he slowly helps the patients come back alive as they wouldn’t have wanted to or care about watching the game at the beginning.

To conclude, I completely recommend that people watch this film but are aware beforehand that there are some scenes that are slightly disturbing but educational. Whilst I was watching this film, I felt that the friendships formed and presented made the film quite moving.