How Cinematic Language Conveys ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’s Message: Slowly, Subtly, and Strongly

Darina Babacheva
2 hours ago
5 min read

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) acts as a cautionary tale toward complacency. The psychological drama centres around Randle McMurphy’s (Jack Nicholson) occupancy in an Oregon psychiatric ward; his navigation of its unshakeable rules and systems leads to a plethora of incidents, sometimes intense or comedic, sometimes hopeful or hopeless. Milos Forman’s multi-Oscar-winning film was originally released in cinemas on November 19th 1975. I had the honour of witnessing its re-release, a month prior to its 50-year anniversary, on October 19th. From this experience, I gathered the way Cuckoo’s Nest embraces its cinematic form to tell a powerful story. This is what makes me appreciate cinema so much, because it lets you find out for yourself the subtext and not-so-obvious truths about the story. Like a puzzle, we as active viewers are able to solve the mystery of the story - and even guess what is to come.

The film’s cinematographic form is an in-between of shallow and deep focus, using a telescopic lens. This huddles all subjects in the foreground and background, lending a claustrophobic sense in every shot. It feels like we, alongside the subjects, are suffocated. This relates to the tangled community dynamic McMurphy faces at the psychiatric ward. The film is defined by the ensemble cast, wherein Charles Cheswick, Bruce Friedrickson, Billy Bibbit, Martini, Dale Harding, Scanlon, Chief Bromden, Jim Sefelt, and Max Taber are predominantly featured in scenes playing cards, basketball, and plotting rebellions together. This is in spite of the fact that Cuckoo’s Nest establishes a primary protagonist, McMurphy, whom we are conventionally privy to relating to. Instead, in their inseparability from him, we come to breathe with them. McMurphy, in the position of a strong and dominant leader, finds his circle of ‘inmates’ irksome, yet crucial to his mental survival. Indeed, despite his circumstances, such as the cruelty? of getting sentenced to the ward, or his inability to watch the football game, his company enables him to preserve a grasp on his social standing and mental state. Through their insanity, he can sustain his sense of normalcy and even act belittling - a product of his bullish personality. He consistently triumphs over the oppressive efforts of Nurse Ratched by micro-regressive acts, asserting his control. Thus, the film’s content and form parallel his own conviction - that his stay at the ward is temporary; that he preserves his dignity and power.

Dishearteningly, when finding out he is unable to escape, his reassuring sense of control is disturbed. ‘You’re in deep waters, ’ the guard asserts, framed at a low angle, whilst McMurphy is seen from a high angle, swimming in a pool, accentuating his vulnerability. The permeating power of Nurse Ratched slowly cracks, leaking into a newfound narrative. Story 2 commences: the plot twist. Subsequently, McMurphy's efforts slowly became more and more futile.

The combination of narrative perspective, content, and form establishes McMurphy’s authority as protagonist when we engage with the story through his perspective. This is at the cost, however, of a narrative failure rendered by the film’s unhappy ending, as McMurphy’s lobotomy renders him incapable of catalysing change. He becomes a pawn in Miss Ratched’s game, dying in the end, unsettling the audience. In turn, the American New Wave film leaves long-lasting impressions, as the conventional promise of a happy ending is disturbed. It seems like McMurphy had just as much control of his fate as we, the distant viewers, did. Ultimately, the themes of control - socially, mentally, destiny-wise - all permeate the narrative through form. Cuckoo’s Nest seems to recreate the real, hierarchical social structures through the microcosm of a psychiatric ward and our identifying protagonist’s position within. We are meant to embody McMurphy, as he represents the common citizen’s helplessness in social, political, economic, and even historical systems. As harrowing a message as this is, I believe it is at times important to jar the viewers’ expectations, so that they can entertain a ‘what if we lose’ scenario in their own lives. This fear response helps us to stir into action, even when just being confronted with our own conformist, complacent behaviours. This is why I do not take the film’s unhappy resolution to be a loving ode to failure, but a tool to promote cautious thinking.

There is a sonic motif that is used to establish contrast between the classical music, employed indoors, and the wild, uncontrolled music from outdoors. The outdoor instrumentation includes wooden flutes, which have connotations to indigenous culture, and are considered to be closest to the natural way of living. This directly opposes the controlled and pitch-perfect sound of the classical genre. It comes to not only be associated with the ward, but with Nurse Ratched, who perpetuates the music regardless of persistent requests from the patients to turn it down. Its calm placitude almost serves as an act of forced complacence and its controlled nature conceals the ward’s sinister reality, painting its exterior environment as ordinary and helpful to its patients. ‘‘That music is all they have,’’ Nurse Ratched contends with McMurphy, but what if it is because she doomed them, forcibly leaving them with nothing but the music? Or what if the music is a metaphor for the ward itself, permeating and infecting their life, where they become unwilling to ever leave? In continuation, a second nurse asserts, ‘‘It’s just medicine, it’s good for you’’ yet an above eye-level shot leaves a vast amount of space over her head, suggesting there is a subtext she is aware of but does not reveal.

One questionable aspect about the film, however, is its assertion of the white man as hegemonic and victorious, whereas the women are positioned as villains of this story. This is achieved through our constructed empathetic attitudes toward McMurphy - most effectively done when he encounters a plethora of difficulties obstructing his desires for liberty and autonomy. When we fight for something, we root for it; however, I could not help but question what ideologies we were encouraged to align with. Our sense of support lay with championing masculine values of gambling, drinking, watching football, and to ‘‘wet our whistles’’. But in reinforcing traditional tenets pertaining to sex, does it not partially reverse the anti-hegemonic, rebellious message of the film itself?

Cuckoo’s Nest’s cinematic form invokes a beauty - a beauty inspiring us to run far and reject our industrial society. This pertains to an early 19th-century philosophy that argues the industrial world seeks to control and stray us away from the natural way to live. The film uses wide shots of the outdoors in pivotal moments of the story - the opening shot, the fishing-rebellion sequence, and the closing shot - to take inspiration from nature; the beauty and liberty in its monumental size. Enabling you to take everything in, the wonders of the natural world are what tune us back into our most organic form as living beings. This is outside of the social constructs which are imposed, predominantly, in the ward setting (as, again, it acts as a microcosmic metaphor). Ultimately, the constructs the world imposes on us, as participants of a Western society, seek to stray us further away from our natural way of living. Rather, we become cogs in a post-industrial, capitalist society that honours full-time labour and productivity.

On one hand, Cuckoo’s Nest reinforces some patriarchal ideologies through its protagonist, in turn continuing detrimental societal beliefs against women and in favour of toxic masculinity. Perhaps this is the effect of the film’s historical context, in being from the mid-1970s, when social mores were not as progressive as modern-day attitudes. On the other hand, the film also positions itself in favour of a natural way of being, emanating the spiritual and free-spirited beliefs of philosophers and poets in opposition to an industrialised society. I believe in the benevolence of this film; it stirs us into our own power, shaking us awake from socialised practices of conformity, and prompting us to re-evaluate where we stand. With rebellion comes social change, and that is essential to ensuring we do not regress in our world history.

Edited by Lara Walsh, Co-Film & TV Editor