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Cool Hand Luke multiplied by Titicut Follies, enough for the émigré's camera to recognize the Eastern Bloc inside an Oregon mental hospital. (Poe's "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" also figures tellingly.) Muzak and pills keep order at the ward, the new patient is a certain McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), a shit-stirrer seeking a cushy alternative to the prison work farm. "A goddamn marvel of modern science," eyes darting under the wool cap as he contemplates a stage for his anarchic pyrotechnics. His opposite number is "that fucking nurse," serenely authoritarian Miss Ratched (Louise Fletcher), every fear of Momism wrapped in starched white. Between them is a circle of subjugated cases—stuttering naïf (Brad Dourif) and pontificating neurotic (William Redfield), contentious scarecrow (Christopher Lloyd) and grinning gnome (Danny DeVito). The towering Chief (Will Sampson) breaks his deaf-mute pretense to warn the newcomer about the oppressive world that's drained his father: "I'm not saying they killed him. They just worked on him, the way they're working on you." An existential tragicomedy where Margaret Dumont has Groucho lobotomized, dryly rendered by Milos Forman as Sixties nonconformism met by Seventies ambiguity. The offhand image is a squirrel scampering across barbed wire, the dream of freedom is to watch the World Series at some bar. (The verboten baseball match occasions a frenzied bout of improvisation in defiance of the overseer who "likes a rigged game.") The endlessness of the sea replaces the bare confines of the institution in the fishing sequence, the nervous wreck (Sydney Lassick) steadies himself at the helm by quietly warbling "I'm Popeye the Sailor Man." The revolution turns out to be a Dionysian revelry, hope lies with the silent protester who breaks through the wall at last. "Which one of you nuts has got any guts?" The closing image is that of Spartacus, appropriately. Cinematography by Haskell Wexler and Bill Butler. With Scatman Crothers, William Duell, Vincent Schiavelli, Mews Small, and Louisa Moritz.
--- Fernando F. Croce |