« One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest » is a harrowing film made by Milos Forman that won 5 Oscars and several other prices.
In this review, I will try to explain why, in my opinion, the main message of the filmmaker should be understood in a broad perspective.
This movie is mainly about McMurphy, a criminal (played by Jack Nicholson) who is sent in mental home because he is claiming insanity to avoid the prison.
But things are not happening the way he expected to.
How more he spend time in the institution, how more he realise that this institution actually verry harmful for the patients is.
Upset by the way things are going on in the home, McMurphy decides to try to bring up a rebelion with the other patients against the oppressive nurses and their way of treating the mentally ill persons.
My thesis is that the story of McMurphy is not made to be related to a single case but more to let us think about the general conditions of people in mental homes.
I think that this film shows us in a beautifull and intelligent way what it means to lock up people that we call abnormal.
Moreover, it also bring up a whole reflexion about the fact of being a « normal » person or not.
In that way, I think that « One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest » questions us with great accuracy about a society problem that still affects a lot of people, even 40 years after the creation of the film.