I am in my second year of college and currently studying A-level media, as well as film and english language. And as part of our media module, we are watching and studying a film called "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and I have to be honest I had never heard of it before, and I don't why as it is the winner of 5 oscars and a brilliant film!
However we watched this and oh my goodness...it was just outstanding. It was released in 1975 and is basically about a character called McMurphy, who gets in trouble with the law and pleads insanity to prevent him going to prison. He is then put into a mental asylum. And he then meets a group of men in the aslyum and sees what abuse and degradation they go through all from Nurse Ratched. And its just an amazing film and one I would never have thought to watch. McMurphy is a character that you shouldn't like for obvious reasons and is a person that everyone would socially hate but you can't help but love the character and its so clever how its done. But I don't want to tell you too much about his character as I think it would affect your outlook on him when watching the film. You will know what I mean when you watch it.
It won an oscar for best picture, best actor, best actress, best director and best writing/screenplay, and they were all well deserved! Both Jack Nicholson (McMurphy) and Louise Fletcher (Nurse Ratched), who won best actor and actress gave the best performance I have seen in a film for a long time, they both just made the characters so realistic and believable and its so clever how they engage the audience with their characters and they just had a brilliant on-screen performance. And I still can't get over how much you like McMurphy as a character but you really, really shouldn't! But all the characters were great, its just those two in particular stood out to me the most. Danny Devito was also in this film, he played Martini who was one of the patients, and I recognised him from "Matilda" and "Batman Returns" and "Big Fish". But he too performed amazingly! There was also Vincent Schiavelli who was the subway spirit in "Ghost" and he was in "Batman Returns" as well! And Christopher Llyod who is obviously "Doc Brown" in the "Back to the Future" movies and he was also in "Who Framed Rodger Rabbit" which is a real nostalgic film for me and one of my favourites! Basically I watched it while going, "oh I know him" and "he was in..." so I loved the cast overall!
It covers such a serious, and social aspect of some peoples life which is mental health. And it was nice to see how it was represented through film in the 1970's and to compare the attitudes from then to now surrounding mental health was interesting. It was beautifully scripted, filmed and performed and I thoroughly enjoyed it and was completely drawn in! And I can't wait to study it in more detail and learn more about it. It has also inspired me to watch more older movies and I have already found a few and been suggested quite a few more, so I can't wait to watch them. I would highly recommend this film to absolutely anyone! A must see in my eyes.
Thankyou so much for reading this little post and i'll speak to you again soon.
IMDB Page for "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest"
No comments:
Post a Comment