One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest:

A Movie Review:

 One Flew Ovver The Cuckoo's Nest is a great movie. with great actors, themes, and writing to push the story of RP Mcmurphy's tenure at a mental institution. Specifically this movie does so many things right, but I will start with one that drew me the most, the setting. The establishing shot of the movie is peaceful and serene, with multiple straight lines to show the harmony of the scene, that is until the car taking RP Mcmurphy (Jack Nicholson) to the mental institution. Once the car enters the shot, it is traveling at a diagonal through the shot, and the camera pans to follow it, making the scenery become diagonal in the shot, from there just about every single line is a diagonal for the rest of the movie. Upon arriving at the mental institution, it also has a view from the ground floor looking up at the higher levels of the mental institution from Mcmurphy's point of view showing how small he really is, foreshadowing his lack of power throughout the movie. At this point he interacts with all of the "inmates" of the mental institution as Mcmurphy thinks it is like prison. An interesting point the movie makes is that all of the inmates (beyond the character named "chief" who is Native American, but his sheer size makes him fit into the setting more or less) are all white males from young to quite old. at this point the "antagonist" Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) is introduced. As a contrast to the inmates, every single caretaker is either Female, or African American making minorities of the time taking care of the majority of the time. also every shot of the caretakers, beyond ones that the "inmates" take advantage of, is angles upward slightly at their face, showing how they are more powerful, but they never look imposing until the end of the film. after this powerful opening the movie somewhat takes a generic route of the new guy changing the system for the entire group, and the struggle to gain their trust. This gets completely turned on it's head in the climax thankfully, but I will not spoil any of the climax, as the last scenes of the movie are very powerful, even more so than the beginning. Back to the setting, the entire institution is a clean white throughout, and very claustrophobic feeling. every shot inside shows the trademark diagonal lines of this kind of uneasy movie, with multiple screams of agony in the background of particular scenes showing what the characters think of the place through nuance. This further drives the motivation of Mcmurphy who for a large portion of the movie (he figures out about halfway in) that the people in the ward are not normal people, beyond how normal a lot of the people seem, with each being given a scene that they crumble under pressure that a sane person would not be phased by, with Mcmurphy slowly becoming insane nearing the climax. In closing, this movie has phenomenal pacing, setting, and characterization to drive its story about the problems of the psychological institutions of the time, and it is completely worth watching more than once, it is a great movie full of unease and suspense.

Sources Referenced:
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest." Media Snobs. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Oct. 2013. <http://mediasnobs.com/movie-review/one-flew-cuckoos-nest/>. 
Prince, Stephen. Movies and meaning: an introduction to film. Sixth Edition ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2004. Print
One flew over the cuckoo's nest. Dir. Miloš Forman. Perf. Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher. Warner Home Video, 19971975. Film.