Remember the late Milo? Forman, director of major titles such as Hair or Amadeus, picked up one of his best-known films: A Stranger in the Nest (1975), a film that presented us with what was probably the best role of Jack Nicholson’s career.
Directed by Forman and based on Ken Kesey’s novel of the same name, A Stranger in the Nest is one of those films that have entered the classics of film history, presenting us with unforgettable scenes from which we see some samples in other works. highlighting Nicholson’s sublime performance, especially his strengths.
- A stranger in the nest.
- A film that wins 5 Academy Awards.
- Introduces us to Randle McMurphy.
- A man who faces a prison sentence and.
- Trying to escape.
- Decides to pretend to be insane.
- So he is admitted to a psychiatric hospital where he is evaluated and where he will live with other patients.
Nurse Ratched works here, who will be the main antagonist. An uncompromising woman who treats patients with superiority and pride. McMurphy will be a breath of fresh air for other patients, awaken your desires for freedom and this will cause several conflicts with Nurse Ratched.
A stranger in the nest is a denunciation of asylums and psychiatric institutions, a denunciation of how ‘madmen’ have been treated throughout history, a cry of war rather than the forgotten eternals. But it is also an awakening to libertad. de all individuals.
Who are the fools? The answer to this question may seem simple. But if we turn to history, we will see that the idea of ”normal”? has changed over time. Social norms, advances in medicine, science, and other fields have profoundly influenced the conception of insanity. In other words, what is considered a mental illness at one time may not be at another.
Crazy people weren’t always the same and didn’t always exclude them the same way. Sometimes there have been attempts to “cure” them by subjecting them to treatments like lobotomy, sometimes they were prosecuted to death. Anything that comes out of the “normal”, the conventional at some point, suffers persecution. This was the case in the Middle Ages with witchcraft or certain diseases such as leprosy. History of Madness in classical times is a work by Foucault that treats this idea of exclusion and persecution of madness very well.
Foucault warned in his work that over time there was an attempt to turn the madman, to train him, then it was normal, how was this achieved ?, through authority and certain treatments whose only effect was to nullify the patient, thus transforming him into a submissive person. That’s exactly what we see in A Stranger in the Nest, when McMurphy, who wasn’t crazy but was a criminal, arrives at the asylum and sees a group of people who are acting reluctantly.
The nurse plays with the fear of patients. This situation has been particularly seen in the case of Billy, an insecure, stuttering young man who has repeatedly attempted suicide, Raatched is a friend of Billy’s mother and, when he does something he shouldn’t do, she presses him and points out that she will tell her mother everything. The fools of this institution obey without squealing, they are afraid, they are afraid of electroshocks and lobotomy if they do not obey the nurse.
McMurphy, not submissive, is the character who refuses to obey, who seeks freedom. It is interesting to see how this character begins to provoke this same rebellion in other patients, how he manages to ensure that these people, who had been completely canceled and manipulated, wake up from this state and manage to face Nurse Ratched.
When he sees his authority in danger, he’ll do everything he can to keep McMurphy from getting away with it. Ratched is the film’s main antagonist, a person considered healthy, with a good position that nevertheless imposes his will on his patients. He pressures them, torments them and manipulates their desire to behave like “normal people,” submissive and without critical capacity.
From now on, the item contains spoilers!Therefore, it is recommended that you do not continue reading before watching the movie. In the midst of all this “madness,” this madness, we can’t forget that these patients are people. They also feel, desire and suffer. Nurse Ratched has played her role so well that she is capable of having an entire army of “crazy. “under control, as if it were a flock of sheep.
It is also interesting to note the original title of the film: We float over the cuckoo’s nest. The English title has a double interpretation. On the one hand, in a family register, the cuckoo’s nest is a way to call crazy asylums in a pejorative tone; on the other, it alludes to a nursery rhyme mentioned in the novel: “There were three geese on one flight: one flew east, the other flew westward and the other flew over the cuckoo’s nest,” implying that each individual has its own path. in life.
Reflecting on the latter meaning, one realizes that this idea of fate in the form of a triad is also present in the film. Freedom is the engine that drives McMurphy, which pushes him to challenge the institution’s rules, but also sympathizes with others and tries to guide them to freedom.
McMurphy takes steps to free himself from others: first, proposing to watch a baseball game; then hijack a bank, get them out of monotony; and finally, with the party and the presence of women. McMurphy has a pity on Billy, because he is young and has lived little; something also unies him to the indigenous leader, an enigmatic and lonely figure.
Returning to the idea of the triad, we see that there are three characters who, one way or another, gain freedom: Billy, McMurphy and the native leader, these are the three geese of rhyme. The first, as we said, is a young man full of insecurity and trouble with his mother, Rabatched knows it and has deeply buried Billy’s desire for freedom, McMurphy wakes her up again, giving the young man a chance to have fun with her. Once discovered, Billy faces two positions: fear of consequences and happiness for himself. Billy can’t stand all the pressure Ratched puts on him and kills himself. After death, he somehow won freedom.
McMurphy was convicted of disobeying and suffering a lobotomy, remaining in a virtually vegetative state, without will and freedom, so the indigenous leader, who for years pretended to be deaf and mute, took pity on him and killed him as a liberation, as a favor for freeing him too, for having opened his eyes. Finally, the indigenous leader is the character who acquires a non-metaphorical freedom, escaping asylum.
McMurphy managed to get patients out of that platonic cave ratched had placed them in, the final scene of the indigenous leader running for freedom is truly revealing and encouraging, no matter if to get freedom some have had to do so. die, no matter what fate the indigenous leader expects, because they have won.
“I must be crazy to be in a psychiatric hospital like this. “- A stranger in the nest-