One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) thinks he can get out of doing work while in prison by pretending to be mad. He has been dating a 15 year-old and is sentenced to a short term for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Rather than spend his time in jail, he convinces the guards that he's crazy enough to need psychiatric care. His plan backfires when he ends up in a mental asylum. Once there, his different way of looking at things begins to stir the other patients up, to the annoyance of Head Nurse Ratched.
McMurphy supports the other inmates in being more independent and livens the place up - playing cards and basketball, and hi-jacking a bus and a boat to take them on an outing, but the Head Nurse is after him at every turn. McMurphy is taken out of the ward and, when he returns, he pretends his spirit has been broken by the ECT (electroconvulsive therapy - electricity applied to the brain via electrodes) he has received, although he is not really subdued.
Chief, a large, unspeaking Native American, seems impassive and simply observes McMurphy but, finally, is stirred enough to throw a water fountain through the window so McMurphy can get out of the asylum (although the escape fails).
Eventually, after McMurphy brings a couple of girls into the all-male ward to have an all-night party, he's finally sent for irreversible treatment by having the front lobes of his brain removed. His return to the ward in this state shocks the other inmates. In the last scene, Chief picks up the water fountain again, throws it through the window and, this time, himself makes a successsful bid for freedom.
This film is about breaking down the 'them and us' attitude between mental health system users and everyone else, which is reinforced by fear and social attitudes and leads to mental health system users being the most stigmatised of all disabled people. It shows well the nature of institutions, which reinforce the original diagnosis and often do nothing to help people come to terms with their problems. McMurphy treats the inmates as regular guys and they start to behave as if they are, though still with their idiosyncrasies.
Based on the book by Ken Kesey, this film played an important part in shifting the attitude of the general public to mental illness.
Make sure you prepare the ground by covering the material in the Introducing disability guidelines before looking at issues in any specific film.
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