Meditation on virtues of dumbness
One of my all time favourite English films
is One Flew Over the Cuckcoo’s Nest, adapted from the novel of the same
name by Ken Kesey and directed by Milos Forman. The film won all five
major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Actor in Lead Role, Best
Actress in Lead Role, Best Director and Best Screenplay) in 1975, six
Golden Globe awards and six BAFTAs
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Directed by Milos Forman
Produced by Saul Zaentz Michael Douglas
Written by Lawrence Hauben Bo Goldman Ken
Kesey (Novel)
Starring Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher,
William Redfield, Brad Dourif
Music by Jack Nitzsche
Cinematography Haskell Wexler
Editing by Richard Chew , Sheldon Kahn ,
Lynzee Klingman
The film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is set in a mental hospital
where the energetic, flamboyant, wise-guy anti-hero Randle Patrick
McMurphy (played by Jack Nicholson) stuck in the facility for an
evaluation while serving a short prison sentence for statutory rape
rebels against the ‘Establishment’, i.e. the institutional authority and
rigid attitudes personified by the supervisory nurse, Mildred Ratched
(played by Louise Fletcher).
Favourite character
McMurphy, although not exactly a saint and yet one feels for the man
as he rants, raves, innovates and goes nuts trying to mobilize a set of
docile (well, ‘dociled’ would be the better term) inmates to break free
if not from the facility at least from the mind-set they’ve been cajoled
and arm-twisted to acquire.
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Jack
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McMurphy carries the film. My favourite character, however, is
‘Chief’ Bromden (played by Will Sampson), a six foot seven inch giant
who we are made to believe is dumb as in ‘cannot speak’.
It is much later in the film that McMurphy discovers that Chief is
not as dumb as he makes himself out to be (literally and
metaphorically).
McMurphy puts up quite a fight but finally and tellingly, he gets
done-in by a lobotomy. ‘Chief’ manages to extract a consolation prize
from the establishment; he gives McMurphy a literal death by suffocating
him with a pillow and proceeds to execute the escape plan that McMurphy
just didn’t have the strength to carry out earlier in the film.
History book
He lifts the hydrotherapy console off the floor of the ward, hurls it
through a grated window, climbs through and runs off into the distance.
I like the McMurphy character, but it remains an easy ‘write’. Rebels
are easy to script. Rant and Rave is child’s play for anyone writing a
screenplay. Dumb is tough to write. Dumb is tough to be.
There are times when ‘Rant and Rave’ inevitably meets brick-wall.
Doesn’t necessarily end up with lobotomies being carried out, but it is
natural to script in ‘severe headache’ and ‘nutcase’, the latter
possibly a hero to some and remembered with some affection by history
book but by and large of little accomplishment and classed more or less
as scripted.
There are times for heroes. There are times for the reticent. There
is a time to rant and rave and there is a time to be silent.
There is a time when some have to scream and others have to be
silent.
There are screamers who get lobotomized. Indeed, screams have to get
lobotomized for the silent to find a way out and walk into a territory
called Freedom.
Some have to scream because that’s all they know.
They are not dumb, not all of them. Some of them actually know that
they will end up on the operating table and be decapitated one way or
another. Or shot, in certain cases.
So we rant and rave, us writing people, us screamers and protestors.
We get ‘treated’.
Cuckoo’s nest
Maybe we are dumb. On the other hand, maybe we are not. If those who
rant and rave end up making others realize their strength, recover
self-belief and pride, then someday, somewhere, someone will say ‘thank
you’, perhaps not by snuffing out ‘life’, or perhaps by doing just that,
considering what this ‘living’ is made of post-operation.
I am sitting here, thinking of how one flew over a cuckoo’s nest.
There was a ranting and raving McMurphy.
There was ‘Chief’. Dumb, apparently. I haven’t seen the film in a
while, but I am ‘seeing’ it right now, as I write. It’s a brand new film
from what I remember. McMurphy is certainly a ‘presence’, but it is
‘Chief’ that carries it. Good to keep in mind.
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