One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

The film version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest handles the elements in the novel very well and produces a work that is true to the spirit of the original and largely to the letter as well. Changes have been made, of course, and they have been managed in a way that serves the letter of the original in a more dramatic fashion. At the same time, the film does veer more into overt comedy and is also weighted more heavily toward McMurphy as a sheer personality than may be necessary. However, he is well-balanced against Nurse Ratched so that what emerges does seem a duel between the two. It is less apparent in the film where the power may lie in this situation, for the fantasy element of McMurphy's play-acting is so strong it is seductive and lulls the viewer into seeing the film as less grounded in reality than it means to be, so his lobotomy becomes all the more shocking as a burst of horrible reality into this otherwise near-comic core.

Certain thematic elements have been muted if not lost entirely. The mechanistic nature of Big Nurse has to be inferred from various symbols, from the medicine she metes out a pill at a time to the hydrotherapy machine Chief Bromden destroys at the end to the shock therapy room with which the patients are threatened.

The Combine is alluded to but does not have the holding power it does in the novel. This makes McMurphy seem more the outside hero coming in to entertain the prisoners, in this case the inmates. He is the free spirit w

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moving, and I get back against the wall, and when she rumbles past she's already as big as a truck, trailing that wicker bag behind her in her exhaust like a semi behind a Jimmy Diesel (Kesey 87). The development of Chief Bromden in the film is very interesting because he does not speak either as narrator or as a normal character with a voice. While one might believe this would leave him an undeveloped character, this is not true at all. He is always the observer and reacts to McMurphy and the others. At the same time, he has a very expressive face which conveys much even if he never speaks. Ultimately, it seems very fitting that the torch of anarchy is passed from the outsider, McMurphy, to the American Indian, the embodiment of all the degradations of society against the land, and the individual who originally was one with the land and who has been made an outsider by the white society that displaced him. It is he who tears up the hydrotherapy device and throws it through the window, walking away from the madness that prevails not in the men on the ward but in those who rule that ward. The screenwriter has eliminated the narrative voice but has retained the power of Chief Bromden in a very effective manner. Some of the

Category: Film - O