One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

“I must be crazy to be in a loony bin like this.” – McMurphy

Number of Times Seen – 2 (20 Aug 2001 and 26 Feb 2014)

Brief Synopsis – A criminal is sent to a mental institution where he tries to help the men already institutionalized there.

My Take on it – This movie is about realizing how to take control of your own life and not just conform for the sake of conformity.

Jack Nicholson’s performance of McMurphy is great.  He is a rebel thrust into an environment that he sees needs to be changed for the sake of all the patients.

Louise Fletcher’s performance of Nurse Ratched is the exact oppoiste.  She likes things to stay the same and does whatever she can to keep things that way, even stooping to some truly diabolical methods in doing so.

The rest of the actors are all great here.  It was nice to see Danny Devito, Christopher Lloyd, Vincent Schiavelli and Brad Dourif in small roles.  Who would have guessed that they would be so recognizable in future movies.

This movie won 5 (of 9) Oscars.  It won Best Picture, Director, Actor (Nicholson), Actress (Fletcher) and Screenplay.  It lost Cinematography, Supporting Actor (Dourif), Film Editing and Original Music.

Those 5 categories it won are considered to be the top awards and this was only the second time (of 3) where a movie took home all of those awards.  The other two were It Happened One Night (1934) and Silence of the Lambs (1991).

This movie isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty close to it.

Bottom Line – Great movie about who is really considered crazy and how society needs to be flexible and not always just have everyone conform to the established rules.  Excellent cast.  Expertly done!

Rating – Oscar Worthy

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