May begins the month for Mental Health Awareness, so what better way to bring some notice to it than to watch a classic movie about a mental institute and the interactions between the nurses and patients. I've heard that this movie is amazing and the acting performances were top notch, so I'm excited to finally watch this. I don't know much about the story line except that Jack Nicholson is admitted into a mental institution and the story follows his experience there. I've seen the clips of the patients hanging out together in the common area and Jack riling everyone up. I also noticed Will Sampson and mistook him for the guy that played Randolph in Free Willy at first, thinking he hadn't aged a day in 20 years, until I looked him up and realized he was in an entirely different movie about a killer whale. He was in Orca with Richard Harris in 1977, so only two years later. No wonder it didn't look like he'd aged much in my mind. I love the movie Orca and can watch it over and over again, so no wonder I recognized him.
I know this movie deals with the methods of "mental care" they utilized 50 years ago, and I remember a scene where Nicholson goes through electroshock therapy, so I'm expecting to see some rough treatment with this movie. I don't expect a comedy out of this, although Nicholson is great with creating comedic moments during serious ones, so I'm not sure what types of emotions I'll go through with this one. I don't like to put too much expectation on a movie before I watch it so the movie isn't weighed down with what I think it should be and I can enjoy it for what the filmmakers wanted it to be. Having heard so much about it, though, I do think I'll get an intense movie with great performances.
It's kind of funny that the image I think of when I think of Nurse Ratched is Chloris Leachman in High Anxiety. I'm pretty sure that Nurse Diesel was supposed to be a spoof of Nurse Ratched, so that makes sense, but it got so deep into my mind that when Chloris Leachman passed away recently, I told someone that she WAS Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and had to correct myself about five minutes later once my brain reanalyzed my thought process. She was brilliant as Nurse Diesel, but she was not Nurse Ratched. Now I'll finally be able to see where she drew inspiration from and have a way to separate the two characters. Time to start the movie!
Wow... Just... wow... So, McMurphy is not a nice guy. The reason he gets taken to this institution is because he was in jail for sleeping with a 15 year old girl and they felt he was acting out in a mentally insane way during his imprisonment. The way he speaks about her during his initial interview with Dr. Spivy is pretty crude and doesn't leave a good impression about his character. As he joins the other patients, he starts to talk to everyone, giving you a feel for each of the characters one by one. I was amazed to see so many faces that I recognized and to see how young they were! There was the angry ghost guy from Ghost, Grima Wormtongue from Two Towers, the man that played Franklin from Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, Doc from Back to the Future, the guy from the original The Hills Have Eyes and Double Dragon, Danny Devito and Will Sampson, who I mentioned earlier. Soo many people early in their careers, long before they took on the roles that I recognized them from most. Each of these characters has different issues and I feel like a lot of them wouldn't be conditions to be hospitalized for in the present day. Some would just need regular one-on-one therapy with a professional. Especially a kid with a stutter who gets nervous around the opposite sex and takes rejection hard enough to attempt suicide. It's surprising to see the myriad of reasons for people to be in the institution, especially considering most of them are voluntarily admitted. It was interesting to see how McMurphy began pulling some of them out of their shells, especially Chief.
So... SPOILER ALERT!!! DON'T KEEP READING IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS!!!
Chief had no one he wanted to talk to nor anyone he was interested in listening to, so people just assumed he was "deaf and dumb." The moment Chief says, "Thank you," to McMurphy and then continues to have a conversation with him, I found myself cheering and clapping. I had a feeling that he wasn't as off as he seemed to be and it was such an amazing moment to happen. Chief found a real friend in McMurphy, one of the few redeeming qualities in Nicholson's character. He also sees how these men are being stunted in their lives by being in the situation of living in a place like that. He takes it upon himself to find ways to get the guys to have some fun, and for most of them, it helps to break them out of their routines. Something as simple as a fishing trip gave these guys a really special day. Never mind that he had to climb the giant fence using Chief as leverage, steal the bus filled with patients, finagle his way into a boat and steer it out to sea without getting caught. I felt like the guys needed some excitement in their lives and that was the perfect thing. He actually seemed to be a better person for having been in there, but not enough to fully redeem him. As he determines how he's going to break his way out of the institution, he decides to throw the guys a party and invite his girlfriend and her friend to the dorms they lived in. It was quite a mess, quite loud and probably lost the guard his job. As he's getting ready to leave, young Billy tells McMurphy how much he's going to miss him. McMurphy offers to take him with them to Canada, but Billy feels he's not ready. He asks about Candy, McMurphy's girlfriend, and McMurphy basically sets the wolves on him. He gets all the patients to drag Billy into a room and he asks Candy to take care of the kid. To just decide that the woman he's seeing should sleep with another man as a send-off... Can't say I was impressed with that decision. Just pulled me right back to the beginning of the movie when he had that conversation with Dr. Spivy. More on that later.
I want to touch on Nurse Ratched for a bit. I always got the impression from people talking about the movie that she was a bit sadistic and cruel. I felt that she stayed very cool, calm and collected at most times. When the patients decided they wanted to watch the World Series, she called for a vote. Most of the patients looked hesitant to go against her and I was waiting for a punishment for the three that decided they wanted a change in policy. But nothing happened. She simply determined that the vote would not be sufficient for changing policy. She was completely rational and even considered the other patients in the ward that most have dismissed as background furniture. I was fairly impressed with how she led discussions, stayed calm and tried to find ways to help everyone communicate more. It wasn't until things started getting really rowdy in the later part of the movie that she started to lose her cool. The major decision that she made that I can't agree with, and saw as her one major mistake, was continuing to tell Billy that she had to tell his mother what he did with Candy. I don't know if anyone in the ward noticed, but his stutter drastically decreased after having a positive interaction with a woman. It nearly disappeared in some of his sentences when he said he wasn't sorry about it and he wasn't ashamed of it. And for Nurse Ratched to know Billy's past of trying to commit suicide after being turned down, and to still continue to needle him with the thought of telling his mother, why on earth would she not consider the fact that he might try it again in that moment? He was a fragile kid who needed positivity and encouragement to break out of his state of uncertainty about himself. The evening with the woman did that for him. Then, Nurse Ratched proceeded to ruin all of his progress. And I don't understand how his mother would have any right to the information, anyway. I'm not exactly sure when HIPPA law went into effect, and I doubt it was in the 60s when this movie took place, but if the kid was over the age of 18, which I assume he was since he was with other adults and not in a separate ward with minors/juveniles, then why would his mother have any right to any information about his treatment and progress? But, as she said, his mother was her friend, so I guess in the 60s she would have felt obligated to tell "the boy's" mother. She wasn't what I expected and I told myself I would lay any expectations aside to watch this, but apparently I hadn't actually done that.
There were a few scenes where I was left tense, waiting for something to happen. Even the scene where McMurphy is treated with electroshock therapy didn't happen for an unfounded reason. It wasn't the right choice of "treatment," but it was a major outburst that finally made them choose such an extreme method. Even with Billy spending the night with Candy. I guess I've seen too many movies because I was worried he'd get carried away and kill her. He did live in an asylum after all. But nothing that crazy happened (pun intended). Just a guy losing his virginity and being excited about it, then having it ruined by getting caught. I totally understood McMurphy's rage over Billy's death and his blame being placed on Nurse Ratched. But, I doubt she thought things would go that far. She wanted him to be ashamed of his actions and when she didn't get the desired result, she kept going with the same tactic, resulting in Billy's complete breakdown and eventual suicide. It was a terribly sad moment in the movie, but McMurphy takes it to a whole other level by choking Nurse Ratched. This director really likes his close-ups because he was doing that a lot throughout the film and the choking scene was no different. You get an up close view of Nurse Ratched's response to being choked. I can't say she looked terrified, but she did look startled and in pain. I think she was too shocked at first to even respond to what was happening. But, one of the orderlies came over to get him off of her and knocked him out a bit. This was the final straw for the institution. McMurphy had been deemed too dangerous. He's taken away and comes back later in a sedate manner. The orderlies lay him out on his bed and Chief waits until they leave to check on him. He's finally ready to leave the ward and as he's telling McMurphy he notices the wounds on his forehead denoting he's had a lobotomy. In a way, McMurphy was dead. His eyes were lifeless, there were no quips, no sardonic smile, no plans or schemes. He was just an empty shell. I can completely understand Chief's choice to put the man out of his misery. There's no way a man with that much life and energy would ever want to live his life out as a vegetable. In his grief, Chief decides to do what McMurphy could not and lift the bathroom faucet system, which looked like it was made of marble and bolted to the floor, and throw it through the window to escape the way that McMurphy had tried to do earlier in the movie. The final scene is of Chief walking away from everything, ready to face the world that he hid from for so long.
There was so much in this movie that stuck with me. I'm incredibly glad I finally sat down and watched this. It was every bit as impressive as I was told it was and the performances were perfection. I would highly recommend this to anyone that hasn't seen it. Even if you already have and you just haven't seen it in years, it would be worth a rewatch to see it with a modern perspective. I could go on a lot more about different scenes of the movie, but I might start dragging on too long, so I'll leave you to see it yourself and make your own judgements.
Join me next week for Silver Linings Playbook. It's streaming on Prime and Hulu if you want to watch it with me. Until then, go watch a movie!
For more movie love, check out my other blog, "You're Watching That Again?!"
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