Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

MY REVIEW OF THE MOVIE PROPER

I've always had a special affinity for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", partially because we were both released in the same year, but also because it concerns itself with a human theme that I find awfully important. No, I'm not talking about rebellion or the triumph of the human spirit or joie de vivre or carpe diem, or any of the many other themes it tackles in its 133 minutes. I'm talking about dignity. To me, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is all about dignity.

The film is set at in a mental hospital in Salem, Oregon. This particular hospital is running just fine, thank you very much. Every day the card games run smoothly, the medication is distributed without incident, and the group therapy session inches closer to putting its finger on at least one of the patients' problems. Into this sterile ideal comes a former work farm inmate named Randall Patrick McMurphy (Jack Nicholson, natch), a bundle of raging hormones and overflowing personality. McMurphy, through the sheer force of his personality, wreaks havoc with the patients' lives, often time for the better, while sacrificing his own comfort and freedom and dignity for the sake of theirs.

This is an actor's movie, set up more like a stage play (which in its gestation period it once was) than a piece of cinema. So I'll concentrate on the astounding bits of acting to be found herein. But before I get to the 400-pound gorilla that looms large over these proceedings, I figured I'd take a quick gander at the triumphant supporting cast.

Whether it was for artistic or budgetary reasons, the occupants of the mental hospital are made up of actors who at the time were all relatively unknown. Director Milos Forman has claimed that this was intentional, as it would allow the audience an opportunity to learn about the characters from scratch, instead of ascribing the qualities brought forth by a famous face. Now, in the 27 years since "Cuckoo's Nest" was first released, many of the supporting cast have become famous faces. Like looking at old baby pictures, it's a fun sideshow attraction trying to spot them (Look! There's DeVito! And Chris Lloyd! And that tall, ghoulish looking man… his name is… um… Vincent Schiavelli!), but their new familiarity hasn't diminished their effectiveness. Not one bit.

DeVito has never been better. His little man Martini, nearly silent, says a lot with his ever-present facial expression: mouth caught in a perpetual smile, eyes scrunched up in confusion. Lloyd is a menacing figure as Taber, a lithe maniac of a man, prone to wild bursts of anger and joy. Schiavelli doesn't really say much. But his hangdog droopiness and mischievous grin do. William Redfield, who succumbed to a battle with leukemia not 9 months after the film's release (a battle the crew learned he was waging while on set), plays the quasi-intellectual Harding. He's a man prone to verbosity and vanity, who doesn't try to curry favour from his ward-mates by toning down his prickly nature. Brad Dourif, in his first film role, plays the stuttering mama's boy, Billy Bibbit. It's probably the showiest role in the film (okay, not the showiest; I'll get to Him soon enough), and Dourif, who has to spit his lines out through the character's hideous stutter, makes what could have been a character uncomfortable to watch rather sympathetic. Of the patients, only Sydney Lassick's Charlie Cheswick didn't completely work for me. Lassick, and I can't tell if this was on purpose or not, creates in Cheswick an overgrown, rather whiny man-child. He contorts his face into the most painful of expressions for the most simple of line-readings. That being said, he and Redfield form a rather effective Laurel and Hardy-esque team, providing the film with some much-needed comic relief at times.

Will Sampson deserves special mention. The treasure at the end of a particularly gimmicky casting search ("the biggest, tallest Indian you've ever seen" might have read the casting director's criteria for the character), Sampson's Chief Bromden carries himself with dignity and wisdom, even though he's just a mute pushing a broom (until...). Watch him during the basketball scene, walking slowly and majestically from the offensive to defensive end, just in time to block a shot (with hands as large and as soft as pillows). Or see him wait patiently, sitting at Nicholson's side, for his turn in electric shock therapy. For a non-actor (gosh, even for an honest-to-goodness actor) it's a stunning performance.

In the shadows of this symphony of craziness, hides Nurse Ratched. Louise Fletcher got an Oscar for her work, which is kind of odd if you consider that the portrayal is rather bland and stoic, far from the explicit showiness that usually garners accolades. But since the archetype of the Big Nurse -- an all-powerful despotic administrator -- has seeped into the public consciousness, mainly on the strength of this movie, she must have been doing something right. And I think I know what. True, she's a blank slate, a woman who never raises her voice above a monotonic purr. But she doesn't really have to be any more than that. She's a woman who knows she holds all the power, no matter how much hemming and hawing she has to put up with from her charges. Why should she waste energy fighting, when she's already won the fight? To me, this is what makes the character effective, and Fletcher, who appears to understand this, underplays just enough to make it all work (The devil-horned hairdo helps a bit too).

All this talk of supporting crazies and Big Nurses would be moot if the man who begins the cage a-rattling, the aforementioned 400-pound gorilla, can't bend the bars. Jack Nicholson, in a performance so good that it defines the expression "career-defining performance", bends 'em, breaks 'em, chews 'em up, and spits 'em out. And still manages a level of subtlety and dignity that even he hasn't matched since.

R.P. McMurphy, the "Bull Goose Looney" as he's described in the book, makes one of the better entrances in film history. Clothed in a longshoreman's cap and a beat-up leather jacket, he is the picture of passivity. Until his handcuffs are removed, and he starts whooping and hollering, kissing guards and flashing that big old Nicholson grin. After this bit of energetic showiness, Nicholson downshifts effectively into my favourite scene in the film, which he shares with a most unlikely "actor".

When considering to film at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem, Oregon, director Milos Forman had the inspired brainstorm to let the facility's superintendent, Dr. Dean Brooks, play the fictional hospital's Dr. Spivey. Brooks' first scene is an assessment interview with McMurphy. Forman gave Brooks a fictionalized patient's chart, complete with criminal history, and instructed the doctor to interview Nicholson as he would any other new patient. Brooks does so, and is never once fazed by Nicholson's improvised madness. The doctor-administrator is a character we've seen many times before and since: a cold, unsympathetic ignoramus, intent on treating his patients like paperwork, and usually more concerned with the bottom line than their well-being. Brooks' Dr. Spivey could not be further from this archetype. He comes across as a smart, compassionate, unfazeable man. Just witness how he never bats an eye no matter how profane Nicholson gets; he's a man who's seen this kind of act a thousand times before. The two men have great give and take, making the scene, which runs around eight minutes long, constantly electric.

Looks like I got sidetracked there. Was supposed to be lauding Nicholson. Guess it just goes to show how good his support really is here.

Okay, so you either love Nicholson's shtick or you hate it. I know people who won't see "As Good As It Gets" just because he's in it (I try to argue that the only reason to see it is because he's in it, but they are never swayed). And here, his shtick emerges full-grown from the cocoon. We get the smile, the raging id, the slick voice, the satanic eyebrows, the mischief, the mystery, we get it all. The group session scenes, where Jack just has to react to the craziness around him, are great examples of his power. So to is the famous scene where he calls an imaginary World Series game that the patients have been denied permission to watch.

But my favourite Nicholson moment is one that is so un-Jack you wouldn't be blamed for missing it. Near the end, when it looks like he might be home free, his plan to escape the hospital nearly a success, McMurphy is foiled by his own good deeds. There's one 70-second uncut shot, the camera framing Jack's face just perfectly, in which a wave of realization flows over him. Ever so slowly, his expression changes from one of smug euphoria, to near horror, to resignation and calm self-satisfaction. It is a wonderful bit of acting in which Nicholson conveys a great deal of information with nary a word. Priceless.

Milos Forman's reputation for working with actors, developed in the ten films he made in his native Czechoslovakia, is cemented here for his first American audience. He does not disappoint. His greatest feat is in the group therapy sessions. Nine men seated in semi-circle, surrounding two nurses, would seem like a static cinematic moment. But Forman, who utilized several cameras running simultaneously to capture these scenes, makes them vibrant and dynamic. The actors, who know that they could be on camera at any moment, never break character, and give some priceless reaction shots to the madness going on around them (Nicholson is at his most gleeful in these scenes, realizing just how loony his new friends are).

Forman also made a typically genius choice in choosing Jack Nitzsche to score the film. Nitzsche's off-balance score first introduces itself over the opening credits, setting the tone for the film with it's use of water-filled cups and a bent saw to create ghost-like, ephemeral melodies. It's all very haunting, very simple, and very beautiful.

The film's script, written first by Lawrence Hauben and then later reworked by Bo Goldman, had a difficult task: adapting a book whose story is told through the internal monologues of a delusional, mute Indian. They took the focus off Chief Bromden, sacrificing his distinctive inner voice but never diluting his power as a character, and placed it squarely on McMurphy. Ken Kesey, who wrote the source novel, cried bloody murder when he heard about this. But if Ken were truly thinking things through he'd realize his novel, as written, would never have worked on the big screen. Hauben and Goldman's script, with the changes in place, works wonderfully.

The film is great from top to bottom. It starts out like a house on fire, and concludes with an ending that, despite bordering on treacly and containing hints and whiffs of melodrama, is ultimately sad and triumphantly satisfying. It's one of the few movies with life-affirming messages that this self-described cynic can give his heart to with pride. And dignity.


MY REVIEW OF THE NEW 2-DISC SPECIAL EDITION DVD

The new Special Edition DVD of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" doesn't contain nearly enough extra material to warrant two discs. What is included could easily have fit on to just one. That being said, what is included is a fine collection of archival material.

Disc 1 contains a crisp new digital transfer of the movie, proudly highlighting its clinical and pristine look.

Included with the movie is an audio commentary track shared by director Milos Forman, and producers Saul Zaentz and my arch-enemy Michael Douglas (you'll have to excuse any Douglas-bashing that is to follow, for the man's mere presence grates on me, like nails on a chalkboard; I'll do my best to keep my vitriol at a minimum, and cut him some slack).

The three men didn't sit in the same room together to create the track. Instead, audio from old interview footage was used, edited to fit with the relevant scenes. This technique, which I found ruinous on other audio commentaries, actually works well here. Whoever cut the footage together did a wonderful job.

Forman offers some fine insight into the techniques he used to make the movie, including how he captured the great group therapy scenes, and his instructions to Dean Brooks before his first scene with Nicholson. Zaentz is mainly present to show enthusiasm and take some credit for the project. Douglas, despite trying too hard with his glowing rhetoric (he often describes elements of the film as "very unique" or "pretty unique", which is kind of like saying "very dead" or "pretty dead"; see, there I go with the nitpicking), is actually quite helpful in offering anecdotes about how he and Zaentz put the film together. Although his achievement had dubious origins (he bought the film rights from his father; had to go hunting for that one, eh Mike?), he seems to have some passion for the film, even twenty-seven years later.

Also on Disc 1 you'll find cast and crew filmmographies, which include any award recognition they may have received, and the awards that "Cuckoo's Nest" itself was honoured with.

Disc 2 begins with a 47-minute documentary entitled "The Making of 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'". It wasn't produced specifically for this DVD, that much is apparent (I can tell because there is some footage of Kirk Douglas, pre-stroke). And many of the interviews are just rehashings and retellings of the same stories found on the audio commentary. But the film does have some true highlights. One, and maybe this only excites me, is modern-era interview with Dean Brooks. He's looking cool and classy as ever. Good to see the man still doing some good in this cold world. Also, we get contemporary interviews with DeVito, Schiavalli, and Lloyd, as well as vintage footage of Redfield and Lassick (alas, no Jack. The best moments are with screenwriter Bo Goldman, who is witty and insightful, while also showing a lot of pride in his work here. He even breaks down at one point, while giving an anecdote on one of the film's key scenes.

The Additional Scenes section is rather short, as the eight featured scenes run only 13-minutes in total. There are some fine, previously unseen moments, like an expansion of the first McMurphy/Dr. Spivey scene and a brief look at my favourite scene from the book, the "peckin' party" outburst, but all in all these scenes don't really add up to much.

The final feature is the original theatrical trailer. It's a rather odd little beast that, to my eyes, doesn't come close to capturing the tone and feel of the movie. It makes the whole enterprise look like a rather bland and lifeless affair.

I'm glad I bought the new 2-disc set, if only to have "Cuckoo's Nest" in my DVD collection. But I stand by my claim that it all could have easily fit on to one disc. This waste of materials still baffles me. Oh, and be forewarned: if you haven't seen the movie yet, the inside cover does a real good job of spoiling the film's ending. Better wear a blindfold when you take the discs out of their casings. Happy to be of service.

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD