One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nestwas a perfect storm of content and execution.
The key to understanding the film was through perspective and symbolism.
Despite being a voluntary case,Billy is unable to make decisions for himself.
Billy’s secondary problem is the relationship he has with his domineering mother.
Nurse Ratched’s omnipotent and watchful eyeeventually leads to his demise.
Billy is a symbol of those who can leave the oppressive system but are too afraid to be contrary.
It takes everything Chief had to lift the console and throw it through the window.
While it seems the most convenient method of escape, thehistory of hydrotherapy gives it symbolic value.
Hydrotherapy is one of alternative medicine’s more innocuous treatments.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest stars Jack Nicholson as a Korean War veteran who pleads insanity after being charged with a heinous crime. R.P. McMurphy is transferred to a mental institution, where he quickly discovers all of the patients are being controlled by a passive-aggressive Nurse named Mildred Ratched. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was critically praised upon release and took home five Oscars at the 1976 Academy Awards.
Chief remembers McMurphy’s idea and put it into practice.
Figures like McMurphy can’t fit into Ratched’s society, and she eventually changes him for the worse.
However, he finds his voice at the end.
Additionally, McMurphy was more explicitly problematic in the book, diving deeper into incredibly controversial territory like pedophilia.
It’s a powerful message that continues to resonate.
