McMurphy In One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest | Actor's Eye | Under Lens

Did you ever try treating fellow patients while being in a hospital as a patient yourself? Sounds funny, isn't it?

 

But that's what our character McMurphy, from the brilliant Hollywood movie  "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest", fortunately or unfortunately, knowingly or unknowingly, does in the movie. The movie, telling a tale of frustration, sickness, feelings, leadership, liberation, love and loss, is a classic masterpiece in its own right.

 

Jack Nicholson playing the role of McMurphy, an unworthy criminal sent for evaluation to a mental institute, has provided the camera what it demands from the character. There are these moments where he is just making fun of the institution and the authorities; at times he is a bully and at times he is quite sensitive to the fellow inmates. He plays with them, he fights with them, he does make fun of them but then also teaches them to live life in the outside world, to stand against the odds and fight for their rights. He loves them and also teaches them how to love. McMurphy shows the poor souls, who have lost all hope from life, how to believe in themselves and enjoy the life to its fullest. Not even for a moment, while portraying all this, did Jack let Nicholson overshadow McMurphy.

 

The journey of the inmates from being a bunch of dull, sad, depressed and oppressed mental patients to happy, cheerful, full of life, though some still being oppressed is what marks the journey of McMurphy and the movie as well. How McMurphy teaches them to live life king size, what all he suffers for that and the cost everyone has to pay at different points of time, are just some of the things that make watching this movie quite an experience.

 

Written By: Gaurav Karmakar