One flew east, one west

Press, 4 August 1976, Page 28

One flew east, one west

by PETER YOUNG When, during its last few days, I saw "One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” for the second time (17 weeks have been available for this feat) I, right from the start, expected disillusion. That first time had been too exhilarating; never in a cinema had I experienced such audience participation. This time, I thought, now that I know — and most of the audience knows? — the catastrophic terminus towards which the action so relentlessly heads . . . the mood will be very different

and the whole story unendurable. Could we live through, again, the shattering transformation of McMurphy’s expression as he realises, there in the swimming pool, that he will never get away? I say McMurphy whereas, of course, Jack Nicholson "plays” the part. Lives the part, more likely, poor bugger. Well, no, the impact, second time round, was very much as before.

Randle Patrick McMurphy — has there ever been such an unlikely mixture of Scottish and Irish elements?

—- still came through as a man of spirit, loyal to his friends. As such he claims the allegiance of all rightminded viewers. Hence the undiminished support won from the- much smaller second audience. He proceeds, as we would say, to take on the system — the “Combine” of the book as personified by Big Nurse — and, because of not-so-subtle character weaknesses, is broken in the process. Killed in fact. Big Nurse strikes me as, mainly, a bully — as someone who cannot bear not to

get her own way, who would rather die or kill others than lose. And poor McMurphy thought he could win her round! “In one week I can put a bug so far up her ass ...” is what, incomprehensibly to me, he seemed to say. The remaining character of note — in the book, apparently, the main one — is an enormous “deaf and dumb” Indian, "the Chief.” But the book is, from all accounts, almost another story. So, at any rate, thought the author. Be that as it may B ? . the Chief, in the film, will be remembered (I almost said chiefly remembered) for his first smile — remember, while standing on the other side of that wire fence? — and for his first words, “Thank you.” That last scene, too, belongs to the Chief for, who among us did not wish him well as he, the “killer” of McMurphy, loped disinterestedly, almost, off into the gloom? Yes, quite a film. Some of the scenes were even better seen twice. But the meaning? Away from the excitement of that fishing trip, and setting aside the built in appeal of the underdog, did not the story do psychiatric nursing a terrible injustice? Was the service, even in the 50s, as bad as that? Was electrical treatment — still the last but often-successful resort for depressive psychosis — really used, in effect, to stun recalcitrant or exciteable patients? Not, one hopes, in New Zealand.

Perhaps, again, McMurphy was that one-in-a-hundred patient for whom all treatment was wrong; who should not have been there at all. Certainly he seemed, this time, alarmingly violent

— and he did try to kill Nurse Ratchet (she was never identified as Big Nurse in the film). But to suffer a lobotomy. Perhaps, after all, I had better read the book.