Oh man. Noone got my references in the recently-deceased Name that movie in 15 words thread. And I thought there were no OFOTCN fans here.
Bill H. wrote
What a great movie.
I had read the book, and watched the movie with my brother, who hadn’t. We both enjoyed it, but I had to explain the ending to him, because it apparently wasn’t made clear enough what Ratched had done to McMurphy and why the Chief did what he did. (Sorry, I don’t know how to do spoilers.)
The world contains honest people and liars. Both groups make the same claim: I’m honest, I’m trying to do the right thing. It’s up to you to distinguish between them. OFOTCN makes this point brilliantly with the Ratchett character.
If you really think Ratchett is a good person…heaven help you when you meet her ilk in real life!
Cyberpundit:
You sure you wanna go on record as having said that? Want an opportunity to clarify before I Pit you?
I’ve heard Nurse Ratched’s name mentioned by real nurses when I’ve been in the hospital (not a mental hospital!), and to RNs she does seem to represent not merely a mean nurse but a nurse who cares more about “the rules” than the comfort or well-being of her patients. For instance, when I complained that the IV in my hand was bothering me and asked if I could have it taken out (since it wasn’t even connected to anything), the nurse on duty told me that it was SOP to leave it in just in case IV antibiotics became necessary, but “I don’t want to be Nurse Ratched about it, so I’ll ask the doctor.”
Not meant as an insult to your brother, but I never read the book, and what happened to McMurphy seemed pretty clear, especially since, IIRC:
The lobotomy incident is foreshadowed when they give him the electroshock treatment. At first we think he’s been turned into a vegetable, then we realize he’s just clowning around. But after the lobotomy, it’s obvious that he isn’t joking - they’ve taken away the very thing that makes him a unique person. The Chief realizes that his irrepressible spirit was what made McMurphy the person he was, and that without it, he would only be an empty shell, so he kills him. At least that was my take on it.
Also, those of you who felt like McMurphy was a bad guy because he was a free spirit should remember why he broke the rules. When he tries to follow the rules by getting the other patients to agree to change the t.v. channel, Ratched simply changes the rules on him. So even when he tries to work within the system, it doesn’t work for him. But when he breaks the rules by having a party, he’s not just doing it for himself - he’s doing it to help Billy come out of his shell. In fact, he’s the only person in the movie who shows any interest in helping Billy. He also shows kindness to the Chief. Just by being a compassionate human being, McMurphy does more for the other patients than any of the doctors or nurses.
Again, I saw the movie a long time ago, so please let me know if I’m forgetting anything.
Put me down as someone that also suggests reading the book.
I had to read it in school. A couple of years later, I saw the movie. I found a lot was lost in the making of the movie. In particular the characterization of Nurse Ratchet.
Daizy
Sheesh. I really don’t care about the film that much but my rather innocuous comments seem to be raising quite a storm.
“The world contains honest people and liars”
And it contains a huge number of people in between or who are a bit of both. That is where I would place Nurse Ratchet (from the film)
“OFOTCN makes this point brilliantly with the Ratchett character.”
I don’t think it does. A lot of you are saying that Rathchet is out to deliberately harm the patients. Perhaps that is how the character is in the book(which I haven’t read) but it doesn’t really come across in the film; at least it’s not the only possible interpretation given what we see.
“If you really think Ratchett is a good person…heaven help you when you meet her ilk in real life!”
The world isn’t divided into good people and Death-eaters. Have you forgotten your Harry Potter?
“You sure you wanna go on record as having said that? Want an opportunity to clarify before I Pit you?”
I am really not sure what is so controversial but if you want a discussion I suggest you start a thread in IMHO or GD. I am not much interested in the Pit.
Yeah, God forbid anyone have a differing interpretation of a movie without his words being taken out of context and turned to make him seem callous or cruel.
The patients in the hospital were there for care and supervision; we, the audience, are to assume that for whatever reason they were unable to care for themselves. Part of the role of the head nurse is to maintain order and authority over the patients who as mentioned were unable to care for themselves. That’s no more wrong than saying that a teacher has to assert authority over a classroom, a parent has to assert authority over a child, a boss has to assert authority over a group of employees.
The question is: what’s the line between maintaining an adequate level of authority, and being a control freak who takes glee in crushing the spirit of the people she controls? At what point does she go from “just doing her job,” to being one the most evil characters in film history? I said that from my cursory viewing of the movie, that distinction wasn’t made clear. CyberPundit feels that that wasn’t made clear in the movie as a whole.
One of the posts compares Nurse Ratched to Martha Stewart – what’s up with that? Where’s the line between just being a bitch and being truly evil? (Assuming as I am that Stewart is probably a wholly unlikeable person but isn’t necessarily evil). Are Kesey and/or Forman suggesting that there’s something inherently wrong with a woman trying to have control instead of being nurturing? Why do people keep bringing up “sexless” as a damnation of her character? Why is there the implication that “boys will be boys,” and that Brad Douriff’s character was just doing what comes naturally, and that his horrible controlling mother is what really killed him, and that McMurphy, instead of being a violent, misogynistic wanna-be rapist and/or murderer, is a free spirit who’s crushed by overly confining forces?
I love this movie, but it is a relic of its time in terms of its treatment of mental health institutions. In short, this was a book and a film with a political agenda.
Thinking in the 1960s evolved where mentally ill patients were seen as oppressed individuals who simply didn’t conform to what society needed. They were only “ill” based on a cultural context. State institutions, at that time a much bigger part of society, were demoralizing prisons that kept patients under control through drugs and electro-therapy.
Some of this viewpoint had some validity, in the sense that state institutions needed to be reformed, but the end result was that many of these institutions were simply shut down and patients released who were not ready to deal with the world. That’s a sad legacy that’s still being dealt with.
You’re welcome to draw the line wherever you see fit, of course, but I don’t get this. It’s not as if I have to do a book report and am asking everyone to do my homework for me. Instead, I’ve got a movie that I didn’t have much interest in, but have heard for years that it’s a “must-see.” I watched the beginning, some of the middle, and the climax/denouement, and the postal service and my schedule have conspired against my seeing the entire thing. So I ask, why is it a “must-see?” What can I expect to get out of the movie? And the answer is, “It’s a must-see because it’s a must-see. If you’re not going to watch it, I’m not going to explain why you should watch it.”
I would’ve thought that this would be an opportunity for lovers of the movie to explain exactly why it is they appreciate it.
Reasons to see Cuckoo’s Nest:
- The choking scene
- One of Jack Nicholson’s best but not-over-the-top performances
- Early appearances by Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd
- The ending
- It’s a good story about one rebel’s efforts to show a bunch of misfits what it’s like to live again
- It’s a tragedy involving the rebel in No. 5
- Great performances all around
- One of the few cases where the film is actually better than the book
I loved the book when I was in high school, and I may be one of the few people who didn’t think the movie measured up.
My biggest problem with the movie is that it reduces the story to a power struggle between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched. The book is an allegory about how society stifles individuality and freedom. I don’t think the movie does a good job of capturing this, which is why SolGrundy can’t figure out why Nurse Ratched is so bad.
As for the question of Billy Rabbit being allowed to make adult choices: he is in the hospital voluntarily, and can leave any time he wants. He and most of the main characters (McMurphy excepted) were not committed against their will. Billy can’t leave because he lacks the self-confidence, something that McMurphy was trying to give him. Nurse Ratched’s goal is to keep Billy dependent - to keep him in a child state - so that she can maintain her power over him.
The book makes it clear that Nurse Ratched represented a system to keep people in their place. The story is told through the eyes of a schizophrenic. Many significant points are revealed through his paranoia and hallucinations. I don’t know how this could have been done in the movie.
SolGrundy
Nope.
The patients were in the hospital because, for one reason or another, they got put there, and there are bars in the windows and locks on the doors preventing them from leaving. And you got nothing from the book or the movie if at the conclusion you missed the point, which was that the people locked up in the psych bin were primarily or solely impaired by the psych bin and its staff. The main character McMurphy opted for psychiatric incarceration under the mistaken belief that it would be better for him than conventional jail/prison. We meet the other characters through his eyes and find some that have been shaken by other people until they rattle and roll pretty badly (Billy) but there doesn’t really seem to be anything wrong with their mental equipment; even the most disturbed catatonic space cadet present on the ward, the Big Chief, turns out to be cognizant (as McMurphy suspected).
Why would you take the word of the system that these people were locked up and under the control of the people running the place because “they needed it”??
With all due respect, I think both of you need to see the movie again. It’s made ABUNDANTLY clear in the movie.
You’re really missing the point. You need to see the WHOLE film; you’re simply arguing from ignorance here. Your characterizations of the McMurphy and Ratched characters are just flat-out wrong. I feel like you are instinctively going into “feminist mode” and not really listening to what people are saying. I don’t get you - you said you wanted to know what the movie was about, and when we tell you, you argue with us.:rolleyes: Sorry to get harsh, but your combativeness is starting to annoy me.
blowero wrote
Well put. SolGrundy, if you don’t want to see the movie, don’t see it. But why do you want to pick a fight with others that enjoy it without making more than a slight effort to see it yourself.
BTW, for those that don’t recall, the movie was very well recognized in it’s day. It won numerous awards, including 5 oscars, and was nominated for an additional 4.
I don’t think Sol Grundy is being combative. He is merely asking for evidence of Nurse Ratchett’s villainy but all I can see are assumptions about her motives and assertions that the film does a great job of showing that she is evil.
Like I said these things may be clear in the book but they aren’t so in the film. None of you have you provided evidence from the film that Nurse Ratchett is out to deliberately harm the patients; apparently we are just supposed to assume this.
I didn’t see anything in the film to contradict the idea that Nurse Ratchett sincerely believed that her methods (and therefore her authority) were helping her patients. Perhaps I missed something but certainly no one in this thread appears to have any concrete evidence to the contrary.
The movie gives the audience credit for being smart enough to figure it out.
But strangely enough those “smart enough to figure it out” are apparently unable to communicate any kind of reasoning behind their great revelation.
Filmsite.org has fantastic reviews and summaries of hundreds of important movies including OFOTCN. Even fans of the movie will find some new perspectives from this.