Who Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?

A new perspective of a classic film I missed the first time around.

I recently re-watched “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” for the first time in twenty years. It’s one of only three films in history to win all five of the top Academy Awards. Those are Best Actor, Actress, Picture, Director, and Screenplay. The only other two films were “It Happened One Night” (1934) and “Silence of the Lambs” (1991).

The film was exactly as I remembered it. Inmate McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) attempts to fool the authorities into believing that he is insane in order to avoid hard labor on a work farm. Here, McMurphy meets his match when he settles in to the mental hospital. Nurse Mildred Ratched (Louis Fletcher) sees through McMurphy’s facade. She takes personally his attempts to undermine her process of treating patients with a one-size-fits-all combination of medication and group therapy.

Making the best of a bad situation, McMurphy interacts with his fellow patients in such a way that provides a hopeful perspective to their lives. He fights for their right to watch the World Series on television. Later, he hijacks a bus in order to take his entire ward on a fishing trip. During a meeting of administrators as the centerpiece of the film, most agree that McMurphy is not insane and should be returned to the bureau of prisons.

The head administrator says, frustratedly, "I’d like to send him back to the work farm, quite frankly. Nurse Ratched, you know him best. What do you think?"

Ratched says, “If we send him back, it's just another way of passing our problem to somebody else. I'd like to keep him on the ward. I think we can help him.”

What Ratched really meant was that she was so intent on proving the efficacy of her methods that she would either cure McMurphy or kill him. After more shenanigans, it becomes clear that McMurphy was not ever going to fit into Ratched’s plan. So, after electric shock therapy doesn’t meet her results, Nurse Ratched makes plans for McMurphy to receive a lobotomy. For those not familiar, this was a drill through his brain. He left the process as a zombie. This inspired his fellow patient, whom he called “Chief” (Will Sampson), to escape and spawn the others to cheer him on.

I left the film differently than I had previously. In the past, I saw McMurphy as a trouble-maker and Ratched as a peacemaker. But now I see the actual truth of the story. Ratched is the status quo and McMurphy represents all of mankind. Man’s constant struggle for purpose is often met with opposition by the powers that be. This is because not all people fit into a prescribed mold. Going back thousands of years, we know that the ruling class has never embraced change, or even input from the minions.

My takeaway from this fantastic motion picture is that we must take risks to inspire others. The square peg isn’t necessarily bad for society because it doesn’t fit into a round hole. Perhaps the misfit is on the right track.