How Is the Film “one Flew over the Cuckoos Nest” Different from the Book and How Does a Man Loose His Life While Struggling to Change the System in His Own Way?
Essay Preview: How Is the Film “one Flew over the Cuckoos Nest” Different from the Book and How Does a Man Loose His Life While Struggling to Change the System in His Own Way?
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The theme of this story “One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest” according to Daniel Woods is “Power is the predominant theme of Ken Keseys One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest: who holds power, who doesnt, who wants it, who loses it, how it is used to intimidate and manipulate and for what purposes, and, most especially, how it is disrupted and subverted, challenged, denied and assumed” (
Randall McMurphy is ushered through the hospital doors by two attendants dressed in white. Among the white walls and floors, McMurphy, wearing scuffed blue jeans, a black leather jacket and a black tight cap, represents a figurative interference of the exterior world entering this sterilized, bitter hospital. Upon entering the ward that is too become his final resting place, he jokes with the current patients, wears a deceitful smile and a deck of cards is rolled up in his sleeve. Immediately he questions the rule of the institution to require all the patients to take medicinal pills, regardless of their sickness or disease. In just these opening scenes of the movie, director Milos Forman has foreshadowed Randall McMurphys future: McMurphy enters the asylum wearing black, the color of death, and right away he shows disobedience against authority by questioning the medication, an indication of his disobedient role for the period of the movie.
McMurphys first anxious meet with the clinical system is Nurse Ratched. She is bitter, hardhearted, and really neutral in the lives of the patients. She is worried only with maintaining her unquestionable power and authority over the men in the ward. Forman, in the film however, does not make many attempts to float Nurse Ratcheds concealed femininity to the surface. Forman does not want to mess the minds of the spectators (with Nurse Ratcheds suppressed woman ness) and danger marginalizing the significance of the fight of the patients, which is the center of the movie.
Randall delicately develops relationships with the other patients and encourages them to think for themselves. In one act, he asks the other men in the treatment sitting to choose for watching the World Series instead of the regular TV programming. He rises up in the middle of the session and asks “Which one of you nuts has got any guts?” He is asking the others to join him in his deliberative effort to undermine Nurse Ratcheds authority.
Forman presents this film and plot to us in a direct and simple manner. The camera will zoom in on a personality without trying to conceal the detail of its being there. As a viewer you can feel the camera moving forward and zooming in and are persuaded to incline into the screen yourself.
As this film represents a microcosm of the injustices of the real world, Forman zooms in on characters during critical scenes of the movie to highlight the characters message. The simple group of the cameras from one character to another repeatedly supports this statement. The location of the hospital is simple (white, white, white) and does not sidetrack the reader from the actual plot. If anything the simpleness of the ward adds to the audiences