A Duplicitous Lead Character Strongly Hinders One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

A few weeks back, I had the privilege of giving a presentation at an event at my college regarding portrayals of Autistic characters in American pop culture. One recurring facet I paid a notable amount of attention to in these portrayals is how in many many depictions of Autism, the Autistic characters are relegated to the roles of sidekicks, they're always supporting a lead character who most assuredly does not have Autism. We've seen this trend bucked a few times in recent productions like The Big Short and Life, Animated but it's still a recurring problem and you can see a similar issue in how people with any sort of neurological or mental handicap are always pushed into supporting roles for characters who don't have such ailments.


A perfect example of this is One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, a 1975 film that managed to win Best Picture and gave Jack Nicholson the first of his three Academy Awards. It's also a motion picture that's aged.....kind of middlingly if we're being honest. The plot concerns Jack Nicholson as R.P. McMurphy, who exemplifies the trend of non-mentally handicapped individuals getting to lead stories centered around either characters with mental disabilities or environments where such maladies are common. McMurphy's a bad egg (dude got sent to jail for statutory rape, something he doesn't hold any remorse for) and has been sent to a mental institution to be examined so that his superiors can figure out what's really going on in his brain.

While he's here, he makes some quick friends with some of the other people inhabiting the ward of this institution he's staying on, including the stuttering youngster Billy Bibbit (Brad Dourif) and the super tall and super quiet "Chief" Bromden (Will Sampson) while also frequently incurring the ire of Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher). From there, the plot essentially goes through the mechanics of a "Stick it to the man!" archetype, complete with stuffy authority figures that exist solely to be disobeyed and wacky situations (like an extended fishing trip) where some hijinks ensue, you can bet on that.

This form of narrative could be fine if used well but it really needs the right protagonist to work and R.P. McMurphy is honestly just kind of outright awful as a choice to lead the project. Pushing a guy who's always acting so self-centered and brash as the figure who fills in the role of "Scrappy outsider standing up to unruly authority" in these kind of inspirational dramas is such a bad idea and even Jack Nicholson's naturalistic performance can't make that decision work. Really, the reason R.P. McMurphy doesn't work as a protagonist in this specific tonal environment is that he undercuts any attempt at pathos or the films noble intended message of treating those that are different from you like human beings.

That's a swell notion but it's one that R.P. doesn't really believe in. Anytime he's helpful to the other inmates (like taking them all out to sea....so he can have intimate relations with a lady) it's for his own selfish gain. Because of this, it just feels like he's pulling a big con on everyone when he starts waxing poetic on the need to give back a fellow patient his cigarettes back. Trying to shove in a morally shallow character as the lead in a movie that's very much going through the motions of a typical inspirational drama is akin to seeing a version of Remember The Titans where Denzel Washington's character was constantly being shown punting puppies off bridges while also giving extended monologues about the virtues of teamwork. In other words, the lead characters depravity gets in the way of the schmaltzy moments that are supposed to make your heart soar but just read as phony to me.

The directing by Milos Forman is kind of just generic, there doesn't seem to be a lot of thought put into shot compositions or creating a ton of memorable imagery beyond the movies final dawn-set shot. It is fun to see well-known actors like Christopher Lloyd and Danny DeVito in their considerably younger forms (it's also cool to see Michael Berryman cameo as one of the inmates) while the cast gives uniformly solid performances with Louise Fletcher probably giving the best turn of all. Pity they all couldn't get a slightly more distinctive, or a tleast less tonally disjointed, movie to appear in. than One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.