One Flew Over the Cuckoo

Milos Forman’s “One Flew Over the Cockoo’s Nest” is based on Kesey’s best selling novel. Its allegorical theme is set in an authentic mental hospital, a state hospital in Oregon. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” represents a place of resistance exhibited by a lively, eccentric anti-hero against the hospital he is placed in and authority that runs it. Jack Nicholson plays McMurphy, the heroic rebel who lives freely or would rather not live at all. This film’s message is dramatizing the rebellion against society and the true rights of the American people. Nurse Ratched plays the head of society refusing to conform to someone below her, in the case of the film, McMurphy.

The Movie begins with a car's headlights move across the screen as the credit’s role. A nurse, we later learn to be Nurse Ratched arrives at the locked, barred entry way to a state mental hospital where patients, nurses, and orderlies were going about the distribution of medication. Pills were being dispensed from the Nurses' Station, a large booth with sliding glass panels.

An energetic, comedic, and somewhat of a rebellious patient Randel Patrick McMurphy, know as Mac to the patients, is escorted into the ward where he meets some of these unusual peopl

. . .

View the whole essay, without interruption

The slam of the locked gate as it closes alerts McMurphy to the Nurse Ratched’s arrival. In “Amedeus” Forman focused on Selieri and in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” he chose to focus on McMurphy, unlike the book, which focused on Chief. When told he is forbidden, he again makes his inquiry outside the station, but she refuses. As he walks from the room, he turns toward the patients refusing to acknowledge defeat and holding that it is better to try and fail than to accept an inadequate situation.

During the next therapy session, Nurse Ratched purposely presses Billy with questions about problems resulting from his mother. McMurphy persuades Candy to sleep with Billy so that he can lose his virginity.

Another editing technique that Forman uses in eyeline matching during the scene were McMurphy is looking at the cigarettes that Cheswick is screaming for. Rumors spread around the ward that he has escaped, or that he has been brought upstairs. He then introduces card games to the patients with pornographic cards through gambling by betting cigarettes.

Milos Forman directed another extremely popular film in 1984 called “Amedeus” about Wolfgang Amedeus Mozart. This editing sequence poses the idea of McMurphy leaving the hospital. McMurphy is unable to leave through the window in time but might have escaped to freedom during the confusion. Flashbacks inform the audience of the tireless brilliance of Mozart, and Salieri's struggle with Mozart’s music out-composing any of his own work. He escapes from the hospital, walking away into the world.

Approximate Word count = 2886
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page double spaced)

Simply subscribe to view this paper, and 100,000 others.