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Why We Love “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”
It is the ultimate anti-authority story
47 years ago this week the movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” was released to theaters. Based on Ken Kesey’s book of the same name, it shows life inside an “insane asylum” with biting humor and sadness all mixed together.
It is the story of a man named Randall Patrick McMurphy, played by Jack Nicholson, who faked insanity so he could serve his sentence for battery and gambling in a hospital instead of a prison. Once admitted to the hospital, McMurphy found himself surrounded by a colorful collection of men with psychiatric problems. The patients are in a drugged fog and are dependent on Nurse Ratched, the nurse in charge of the ward, to “help” them find their way.
Nurse Ratched is a stern but outwardly calm nurse whose chief objective is to maintain order. She is humorless and runs her ward unchallenged, that is until McMurphy appears. Nurse Ratched is the mindless authority. Curing isn’t her purpose. Control is. Her goal is to keep everyone dependent on her and in a mental fog. Her cure for people who don’t like the fog is more fog. She has a team of orderlies who physically restrain rebelling patients and administer the medication.
McMurphy is the rebel against her authority, and the only one Nurse Ratched truly is…
