Well from an eighties classic comedy to this drama straight out of a mental ward. I have to interject with I have lost count of the number of times and in very inappropriate places I have broken the silence with the words ‘Ah juicy fruits’ but that is not for this review. I am not sure how to pigeon hole this movie so I will go with mental hospital drama. Released in 1975 and starring Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Will Sampson, William Redfield, Brad Dourif, Sydney Lassick, Christopher Lloyd and Danny DeVito. With Jack playing the main protagonist and lets just say he isn’t playing a doctor. It was produced on a budget of just $3m and went on to return $163.3m, based on the book of the same name. Critically this movie is loved by everyone I speak to and is a melancholy tail to tell I will keep the plot brief with a main character description and not much more. I don’t have a problem with the critic challenge as the other guys have scored this so much higher than me and that’s fine by me with IMDb scoring it a 8.7 which for them is huge and likewise with Rotten Tomatoes giving it a 94%. This could be described as a classic and should be watched.
The plot follows a Randle Patrick McMurphy to a mental institution after serving just a short time of a longer sentence at a Prison Farm. Due to his repeated behaviour at the prison rather than doing hard labour for his charges of assault and statutory rape of a 15 year old he has been shipped off to a mental institution in Oregon. He is confronted with Milfred Ratched a passive aggressive head nurse, a tyrant who uses the rules made by herself to intimidate her patients into a restrictive, joyless existence. Randle is joined in group sessions with Billy Bibbit an anxious stuttering young man, Charlie Cheswick who has childish tantrums, Martini who is delusional and innocent, Dale Harding a well educated but repressed gay, Max Taber – belligerent and profane, Jim Sefelt and Bruce Fredrickson who are both epileptics but Jim refuses his meds and gives them to Bruce and Chief a violent minded and very tall native American called Scanlon. As I said I am not going to go into the story too much more than this introduction. The group come together and have reach a point where they all know one another and just get along in blissful ignorance then this anarchist enters the fray who is there just to get out of hard labour and get an easier life while he see’s out his time. The state have other opinions of this and the nurse is in charge and she isn’t going to see that control relinquished very easily.
I think I used the right term before as this movie is a melancholy movie. I can see why it is so well loved and why it is liked with the scores that it has. I have to admit that the first few times I watched this movie I never realised the crime that Randle had committed prior to arriving at the hospital. The point when he realises that most of the others are there through choice is wonderful. Knowing he is stuck here and there they are knowing they can get up and go home at any point. The basket ball match and the group sessions are all well remember. This movie launched so many careers and I would assume friendships as these guys went on to work together on other projects. Jack is scary in that he plays a madman way too easily and way too well. The lose cannon that he is fits perfectly into so many roles and I love him for it. You cannot deny he is a fine actor and this is a gritty and down to earth sad story that is worth a viewing even if it is just the once.
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