One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

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  TheMovieDiorama

  9 / 10

  One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is brimming with memorable characters. Films today just don't have that sense of story and character, it's more visual narrative and overacting. There's no overacting here, every performance is understated in their own unique way. Nurse Ratched, played by Louise Fletcher, is cool, calm and collected and yet her mannerisms exude terror. Her authoritative figure and soft spoken voice just adds to this, so much so that the patients in the state mental hospital are petrified of her. Randle McMurphy, played by Jack Nicholson, is just a common criminal who to start with plays along with the other patients. However, upon the realisation that he may not ever get out...he starts to find ways in order to escape. I found his performance captivating and clearly he is great and portraying crazy people, just look at The Shining. He is able to control the smaller scenes with his charisma and own the bigger crazier scenes with his excitable energy. His raucous behaviour puts the other patients at risk of certain procedures such as the controversial electro therapy. What really compelled me was the similarities between the mental patients and the outside world, to which McMurphy says that there is no difference. The screenplay for that scene, well every scene actually, brings life to each character. From the first 30 minutes, every character's personality and state of mind is indicated to us. There are no boring characters, each of them have unique qualities and that is something you don't see in every film. Loved the fishing boat scene, adored Chief's and McMurphy's friendship and appreciated the time and effort spent on character interactions. The way they talk to each other in the therapy sessions just felt natural, and to balance the screen time between them all was just genius. You just don't get films like these anymore.

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