1975 drama, dir. Miloš Forman, Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher;
ImdB /
allmovie. "I don't think he's
overly psychotic, but, I still think he's quite sick."
Another film widely praised as a classic; and, alas, another film
that left me cold. And a significant part of that stems from the first
scene, when McMurphy needs to build up our sympathy, and tries to do
it by confessing unapologetically to statutory rape. I've never had a
great deal of sympathy with the "she said she was old enough"
argument, and in this case I wonder what business a man in his late
thirties (not specified explicitly, but Nicholson was 37 during
filming) has screwing people young enough for the age of consent even
to be in question. The man is a sleazebag.
But I suspect this may be part of a wider problem: The film tries to
be in praise of the disrupter and the troublemaker, and I've met too
many people who enjoy that role and don't mind what gets broken as
long as they come out with a personal following of the
easily-impressed. Yes, the system will grind you down if it can. But
the system has met troublemakers before, and you are not so uniquely
special that you can get away with fighting at every opportunity: it
will just grind you extra hard. This was only ever going to end one
way, and everyone except McMurphy is smart enough to see it.
The mental health system of the 1950s could indeed be a horrible
place, both in itself and especially if you came up against an
authority figure who wanted th throw their weight around, and just
like some branches of Christianity it attracted people who wanted to
do that. But the movement towards deinstitutionalisation was already
happening when Kesey's book came out in 1962, and ten years later (in
part as a result of that book) this 1950s style barely existed. So the
entire film is a shout of rage at something that has already been
largely changed by the time anyone sees it.
Kirk Douglas wanted to play McMurphy as soon as the book came out, but
even he had trouble finding a studio willing to make the film. He met
Forman in Prague, but then the invasion happened and they lost touch.
Forman fled to the USA but had mental health problems of his own, and
by the time Michael Douglas and Saul Zaentz presented him with the
script again, he had no recollection of having seen it before. Kirk
remained interested in playing McMurphy, but was clearly too old for
the role. Gene Hackman, James Caan, Marlon Brando, and Burt Reynolds
were all considered, and all turned it down.
Meanwhile Louise Fletcher grew up in Alabama and was very exposed to
the whole "for their own good" mindset. She appeared in a lot of
Westerns because she was tall and couldn't get acting work in other
genres; she was originally cast here in a supporting role to Lily
Tomlin, until Forman saw her in Thieves Like Us.
There are many future stars here (Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd,
Brad Dourif). But the whole thing is a slog to experience. Perhaps
it's meant to be.
Ratched is supposed to be the big villain, controlling through
subtlety rather than shouting; but I can't help thinking that she also
just wants a quiet life dammit, having been given responsibility but
little actual authority. And because she has to stand for the
entirety of the System, she can't be All Authoritarians and the
one who is a bit different (the paternalist rather than the sadist)
Meanwhile what McMurphy doesn't realise is that these people are
broken. He can't rely on them to back him up the way his normal fellow
sleazebags would. He sees this at the card game, but he doesn't take
it on board, so when he tries to take control of the therapy group it
comes apart in shouty argument. When he tries to have the hooker
party, it gets out of hand.
This is the second of three films to date to win all five major
Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Director, and
Screenplay) following It Happened One Night (1934), and preceding
1991's The Silence of the Lambs. I think this says more about the
Academy than about the merits of the film.
I talk about this film further on
Ribbon of Memes.