Psychological Analysis Of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

The conflicts that arose between our two main characters gave purpose to the story being told and insight to McMurphy 's underlying strengths. Forman 's casting of these two is what allowed for them to be viewed as such realistically regular people who are so much more once you get to know them, just as anyone one might meet on the street, but in a quite disturbing way. "Nurse Ratched represents the System, that all Randles must buck" (Canby par.6). Indeed she does, however, their quarrels were much more than a rebellious man 's reaction to being told what to do. As mentioned before, McMurphy had his hints of kindness and generosity that arose out of care for his fellow inmates. So at first, his interrupting of a therapy session by flipping …show more content…
Furthermore, after hearing the guards listen to the World Series game on the radio, the audience learns the year is 1963, and for those who lived during that era, the underlying message of the movie soon spills out onto the screen. The constant collisions between the nurse and McMurphy represented the political problems our nation faced when too much power was given to the wrong kinds of people. Berardinelli goes on to say, "On the surface, the movie is about the struggle of wills between R.P. McMurphy...and Nurse Ratched.... Beneath the surface, it 's about the attempts of an autocratic force to squash the individual" (Berardinelli par.1). Forman created a movie that more realistically reflected the "post-Watergate" seventies crisis--to appeal to those seeing the movie then--rather than keep the "counterculture sixties" aura Kesey 's book represented, as explained by Sean Axmaker in his review for One Flew Over the Cuckoo 's Nest for Turner Classic Movies (par.2). Nurse Ratched took form of the dictator figure--keeping others down in aid of herself-- while McMurphy becomes a symbol of individualism and a "misfit king leading the subjugated souls to moments of freedom against …show more content…
One Flew Over The Cuckoo 's Nest was filmed on location at the Oregon State Hospital, so not only did this element give the film a much more realistically uncanny tone, but the actors were affected by the unearthly scenes as well. They were able to develop a closer relationship with their characters by being surrounded with what they 'd be encountering every day. Producer Michael Douglas is quoted in Axmaker 's review by announcing, "We got so involved that some of the actors actually took on the psychotic problems of the patients they played" (Axmaker par.5). This connection between the actors allowed for the characters to be that much more evidently