#33 - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

This is not the first time I've ever attempted to watch AFI's Top 100 List. The first attempt was made near the end of ninth grade, when I was just 14 years old. I made it about halfway through the list, but I only understood about a third of what I saw. I watched 1975's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" on the last day of school, when I got home. I didn't understand a bit of it. I'm happy to say that, on second viewing five years later, I understood most of it (at least I think so).

Jack Nicholson plays R.P. McMurphy, a man who is institutionalized for being belligerent and anti-authoritarian but not for any kind of mental illness. A constant aggressor of the status quo, McMurphy learns to hate the quietly tyrannical Nurse Ratched, played by Louise Fletcher. The movie follows McMurphy's time in the institution and shows his relationships with the other people in his ward -- most of them there voluntarily instead of being committed. Nurse Ratched loves to go against the grain of McMurphy's radical ideas, and the two build a hateful relationship that explodes near the end of the movie and ends with one of the most tragic occurrences depicted in American cinema.

What I disliked about this movie was the reputation that preceded it. I have always heard that Nurse Ratched was one of the meanest, most evil villains in film history (she is listed by AFI as the 5th greatest villain ever). Instead I saw a woman who simply liked having a routine and liked having order instead of chaos -- these are not undesirable qualities to look for in a head nurse of a mental institution ward. I found myself victimizing Nurse Ratched and making a villain out of McMurphy. He steals a school bus and takes all of his cognizant ward-mates on a deep-sea fishing trip (on a stolen boat), he organizes a Christmas party and invites guests from the outside, and he makes an absolute mess out of the ward and nurse's office in the process.

I'm not saying Nurse Ratched wasn't a little cold, a little calculating, a little sinister ... but a villain? Not in my book. All that aside, the movie is a truly great exploration of what it's like to be constantly going against the grain of drone-like thought with raw, individualistic expression.