"Cuckoo's Nest, meanwhile, is potentially much thornier. It's a comedy-drama made at least in part as allegory an anti-conformity story of fomenting 1960s social rebellion, disguised as a movie about lovable patients at a mental health facility. The Ken Kesey novel that the movie is based on was published in 1962, chronicling some of what Kesey saw as a hospital orderly and anticipating some of the coming pushback against postwar American conformity."
"The major change in Milos Forman's film is to shift the narrative away from Chief (Will Sampson), a towering Native American who presents himself as deaf and mute. Chief narrates the book, while the movie hews closer to the perspective of RP McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), who enters the facility having faked mental illness in the hopes that he can avoid serving out a prison work-camp sentence."
Three films have won the Big Five Academy Awards: It Happened One Night, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and The Silence of the Lambs. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest feels the most unlikely sweep because it functions as a comedy-drama and an anti-conformity allegory tied to 1960s social rebellion. The movie adapts Ken Kesey's 1962 novel but shifts perspective from Chief to RP McMurphy. McMurphy fakes mental illness to avoid a prison work-camp sentence and collides with Nurse Ratched's strict control as he tries to inject individuality and fun into the ward.
#one-flew-over-the-cuckoos-nest #academy-awards-big-five #1960s-social-rebellion #mental-health-allegory
Read at www.theguardian.com
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