About
halfway through the brilliant One Flew
Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, director Milos Foreman presents us with an image
whose delicate paradox underlines the dichotomies of themes that govern the
film. In a still, lengthy, almost monochrome closeup, a squirrel daringly but
carefully walks across a chain link fence. In this one moment the ideas behind
the movie and its source material, Ken Kesey’s novel of the same name,
crystallize: nature against the machine, freedom versus imprisonment, inside
and outside. The small animal stops on the fence and looks towards the other
side. Like McMurphy, it sticks out because of its incongruity and, also like
the main character, is too small a force, no matter how powerful, to leave its
mark on the establishment.
Cuckoo’s Nest, both film and
book, captures McMurphy’s struggle against authority, the heartrending
victories of a classic outsider, a free spirit in a closed system, and his
eventual, tragic descent. But while the novel is a celebration of how one man,
making a near-spiritual sacrifice, can make a difference, awakening from their
drugged lethargy an entire community of the defeated, the movie presents us
with his ultimate failure. Judging the film as a separate entity from the
novel, it is an emotionally compelling masterpiece, but, after having read the
source material, it’s clear a lot is lost in translation from page to screen.
***This is a comparative analysis of Foreman's film and Kesey's novel, and it contains spoilers.
***This is a comparative analysis of Foreman's film and Kesey's novel, and it contains spoilers.
