It’s McMurphy versus Ratched, but it might as well be Life versus Death.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest—director Milos Forman’s adaptation of the Ken Kesey novel, set in an Oregon psychiatric ward—begins as a familiar, if 1970s-specific, middle finger to authority. On the one side is R.P. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), newly committed to the ward after run-ins with the law and increasingly erratic behavior. Asked why he’s been sent there for evaluation, he grins and says, “I fight and f*** too much.” On the other side is Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), an implacable figure in white who rules over the ward with passive-aggressive rules, emotional manipulation, and an electric-shock trump card she’s willing to play if any of the patients push things too far.
Forman and his supporting cast establish a credible portrait of community in the ward, one that—save for a wacky, unauthorized fishing trip—presents the patients as fully realized individuals, rather than oversized children. Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd seemed particularly immersed in the background of many scenes, the former wearing a squinting smile as a form of self-defense and the latter thrumming with coiled energy. Then there is Will Sampson as “Chief” Bromden, introduced as deaf and dumb but revealed—in a shattering midnight monologue about his father—to be the movie’s sly soul.
As for the leads, McMurphy is a meal of a role for Nicholson, who had at this point firmly established his iconoclastic persona with the likes of Five Easy Pieces and The Last Detail. McMurphy arrives at the hospital clicking his heels and planting a kiss on a guard’s cheek. He snarks his way through an entrance interview, although thanks to the delicacy of the performance you can still sense his underlying unease. Watch the way McMurphy’s face flickers with failure when he hears his age—“38”—and listen closely as he quietly mutters, when asked about his prospects, “It ain’t up to me, it ain’t up to me.” Even in McMurphy’s most impertinent moments, Nicholson plays him like a cocky, cornered animal.
Once in the ward, McMurphy exerts his will where he can, gradually inspiring his fellow patients to do the same. He accepts his meds with performative, exaggerated obedience—all smiles and raised eyebrows—but later reveals the pill is still under his tongue. He tries to arrange for the ward to watch the World Series, then delivers an imagined, spirited play-by-play performance when Ratched refuses. His fellow patients—and we—cheer in response.
In Forman’s hands, McMurphy becomes more than a rebel in this specific time and place. He becomes mythic—a symbol for irrepressible Life. In one boastful moment, he bets his fellow patients that he can lift a marble sink and throw it through the window. He blusters and wheezes, like the wolf blowing on the house of brick, before eventually giving up. “Well I tried, didn’t I, goddamn it,” he says as he sorely saunters away. “At least I did that.” This is Life—straining against Death, to the bitter end.
What of Death, then? As Nurse Ratched, Fletcher gives a chilling, remarkable anti-performance. The point is not to reveal anything at all. Many of Forman’s close-ups are reserved for Fletcher’s face—eyes drained of any spark, skin sapped of any feeling. A rare flicker of emotion emerges when she squashes McMurphy’s World Series hopes; her small smile is the embodiment of evil. It’s not only that she doesn’t want to change the ward’s schedule. It’s that she wants McMurphy to fail. There is no heart for rehabilitation here.
And to be clear, McMurphy needs rehabilitation. He is no innocent. We learn during his entrance interview that he has served time for statutory rape of a 15-year-old girl; the “excuse” he gives the doctor is disgusting. If this makes it hard to “root” for McMurphy as a specific character, his fallibility in a way adds to his mythical stature. Life, after all, is not the same as “goodness.” Life can be messy, full of mistakes and bad decisions, some of which cause others real pain. But life is also rehabilitation—life anew.
Ratched can’t abide such a notion; if she doesn’t exactly aim to kill the men in the ward, she wants to keep them in her soul-killing purgatory. And so, in the end, McMurphy is forced to endure a lobotomy. He returns to the ward a zombie, one of the living dead. In a sense, Chief’s decision to smother him with a pillow later that night can be considered a mercy killing. If McMurphy’s life has been cruelly reduced to a false one, at least Chief can give him a death that is true.
(7/30/2025)
