One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest at 50: the spirit of rebellion lives on

The Guardian ^ | 19th November 2025 | Jesse Hasseenger

[Cronos]

The 1975 drama, one of the only films to ever receive the big five Oscars, remains a touchstone of American cinema with a resonant message of resisting conformity.

Amovie winning the big five Academy Awards – best picture along with honoring the lead actor and actress, writing and directing – happens so rarely that there’s not much use in examining the three movies that have pulled it off for common ground. But among It Happened One Night, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and The Silence of the Lambs, it may be Cuckoo’s Nest, released 50 years ago on Wednesday, that feels like the unlikeliest across-the-board triumph. It Happened One Night and The Silence of the Lambs both belong to rarely awarded genres (romantic comedy and horror, respectively), which makes their big wins unusual but also clearcut: here is an example of the best this type of movie has to offer. Cuckoo’s Nest, meanwhile, is potentially much thornier. It’s a comedy-drama made at least in part as allegory – an anti-conformity story of fomenting 1960s social rebellion, disguised as a movie about lovable patients at a mental health facility.

Chief narrates the book, while the movie hews closer to the perspective of RP McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), who enters the facility having faked mental illness in the hopes that he can avoid serving out a prison work-camp sentence. Though the doctors don’t seem entirely convinced by his ruse, his behavior is apparently erratic enough for him to stay at least a little while. His attempts to bring more individualism and fun to his cohabitants runs afoul of Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), who exercises tight control over the ward.

. “I tried, didn’t I? Goddammit, at least I did that,”

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TOPICS: Music/Entertainment; TV/Movies
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[FreedomPoster]

Brilliant comment and spot on.

A frequent comment over at Patriots.win is “Make Mental Hospitals Great Again.”

Many see the need for them, what we’re doing, nothing, is absurd. On the other hand, many don’t trust the government to control who is involuntarily committed. Would you trust the leadership of your local Dem party with this? The people who forced Covid vaccinations on the world?

So we’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t.

[Maine Mariner]

I remember Michael Sarrazin in the Flim Flam Man starring George C. Scott. Both did a great job in that film.

[Chickensoup]

Worst propaganda piece ever. The introduction to the current state of mental health care in THE US and cause of deaths and destruction of many people. Gave Thomas Szaz twisted psychology a foothold in the country:THE MYTH OF MENTAL ILLNESS.

Leftists used this to empty mental hospitals and begin a holocaust of deaths and displacement that has taken down our country and gave rights where none should have been had.

[Chickensoup]

This is truth. It is coming back. So much suffering though.

[Chickensoup]

Yes Rocky Horror brought perversity transvestitism and homosexuality out of the corners of the Vilage and right into mainstream coolness.

[Chickensoup]

Mental hospitals were local and state controlled.

[Engraved-on-His-hands]

Quite frankly, I didn't like the film.

Thanks. I really didn't like the film either. I've wondered all these years if it was just me.

[Uncle Miltie]

Why crazies are on the streets today, screaming at the sky.

[Orosius]

I’m no feminist, but when I watched this again not long ago I was struck by how crudely misogynistic it is. Somebody had some severe mommy issues here.

[Bon of Babble]

Excellent post and I was going to write something similar - about this very movie being the catalyst - asking the questions: “Are they really the mentally ill? Or are WE mentally ill for locking them up?”

This led to mental institutions closing en masse and the patients released “back into society” - with all kinds of new legal “rights” not to be locked up in a “snake pit” or forced to take drugs - drugs that either kept them calm or kept their mental illness in check.

Now, we have the catastrophic results: Unmedicated, mentally ill homeless all over the streets of our cities and in our parks making them unusable, decreasing the quality of life for them and for us. California (OF COURSE) has the most - with the billions ear marked for “helping the homeless” disappeared.