Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

I got a whiff of misogyny from the book that I didn't get from the movie. In the book, McMurphy just seemed like a dick and the characterization of nurse Ratched as malevolent seemed a bit strained.

Maybe all that comes from having seen the movie first. I dunno.

I know many mental health professionals, and I have met at most one who seemed even vaguely like nurse Ratched. As you say, a bit strained. Though in the movie it's all terribly convincing.

Have you seen Girl, Interrupted?

I thought the Nurse Ratched in the film was terribly sexy...am I a pervert? I didn't pick up on that at all in the book. There was this undercurrent to her on screen...

That isn't what I meant about GI. I meant if you've seen One Flew Over that's enough. That maybe unfair, maybe one has to see lots of movies set in such institutions, but for me one was enough. In my whole life I want to see one of them, one gaol movie, one.....

Andrew: hm, I saw the movie in my late teens, and it was impossible to think of nurse Ratched as sexy. I must watch it again sometime and find out if I have the same reaction! You've got me curious.

Not: Don't you think you owe it to yourself to see another movie which offers a diametrically opposed take on the key issues? What happened to right of reply?

Manny wrote: "Not: Don't you think you owe it to yourself to see another movie which offers a diametrically opposed take on the key issues? What happened to right of reply?"

Said the man who wants to go to a beauty pagent. Where does that argument stop?

My reply is here.

Thank you for this review - it makes me want to re-watch the two films together.

I always felt Girl, Interrupted owed just as much to The Bell Jar as it did to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Lotta, I'll be interested to hear what you think if you do that!

Yllacaspia, that's a good point about The Bell Jar - somehow it hadn't occurred to me before. Though she comes across as more positive than Sylvia Plath...

McMurphy, in the book version, is described as being more physically imposing and even virile, while Ratched is portrayed as some over the hill spinster. The whole thing smacked of "All she needs is a good man." There's even a part where he tears at her clothes to expose her naked breast.

I've never seen Girl Interrupted because it looks stupid.

Conflating a discussion of the novel and film seems like a mistake to me. Nicholson's McMurphy is a character all his own, and he's a great one, but he's not Kesey's McMurphy and that's an important distinction to acknowledge when we're talking about the movie and the book together. And as great as that movie is, it's not Kesey either. You have two great works here, and obviously the movie grows out of the novel, but the director and the author (and we better include Nicholson here as well) are not all working toward the same end.

To talk about Cuckoo's Nest as if it's merely some kind of commentary or critique of the mental health institutions of the time is to read the book at it's most basic and almost meaningless level. It's like saying that Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion is an investigation of the Northwest's logging industry. Or The Odyssey is a book about sailing.

And yes, I'd agree that Kesey does open himself up to charges of sexism in the novel, and perhaps even racism, but again I'd suggest that's only if you are reading the book at its simplest level, and this novel needs more thought than that. Don't scoff, but I'd suggest there's something almost epic going on here, something about the lost frontier. Sure Kesey places it into a mental institution and a lot of it is put into a male/female dynamic, but I think that's just one way to examine the larger ideas he's trying to explore here.

Bird Brian wrote: "I've seen both movies, but haven't read the books. Maybe I should.

To me, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a criticism of a lot of things in medicine, including: the danger in all of medicine b..."

Agreed about the criticism that Cuckoo's Nest is making, but is it really a justified criticism? Okay, the Soviet were putting dissidents in mental hospitals, but this isn't about Russia. I remember a comment somewhere to the effect that Cuckoo's Nest had set back mental health programs 10 years.

To me, the opposition between the two movies is summarized in the contrast between the satanic nurse Ratched in Cuckoo's Nest and the Whoopi Goldberg character in Girl. (view spoiler)[There's this moment near the end of Girl when Winona Ryder says something really horrible to her (possibly she has acquired skills from the Angelina Jolie character, who's good at this kind of thing). You can see how hurt Goldberg is, and then she slowly pulls herself together and puts on her professional persona again. Ryder, and the watcher, suddenly realize: OMG, she's not nurse Ratched after all. She's just trying to help someone who's actually pretty sick. (hide spoiler)]

I've attempted to read this book twice, but I never gotten very far. I'm disappointed in myself, as I've read Girl, Interrupted twice and greatly enjoyed the movie.

But the reason Girl rings a bit better for me? Probably the same reason The Bell Jar and the Yellow Wallpaper and The Awakening do. The stigma against women and mental health and "hysteria." If anything, Kesey owes Gilman and Chopin as much as Plath and Kaysen owe him. But then I'd say Plath and Kaysen drew more strongly from them than they did from him.

Of course, you also have to know a bit about BPD before you really get Ryder's character's illness and the way she reacts to it. The girl is definitely ill.

I really want to read this book, I just can't get into it. I have seen bits and pieces of the movie, mostly because I find Nicholson fantastic.

Petergiaquinta wrote: "To talk about Cuckoo's Nest as if it's merely some kind of commentary or critique of the mental health institutions of the time is to read the book at it's most basic and almost meaningless level. It's like saying that Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion is an investigation of the Northwest's logging industry. Or The Odyssey is a book about sailing."

Yes, I think you are right about that - the movie is really about deeper issues, which is why it's had such a lasting success. All the same, my feeling is that a fair number of people have unfortunately interpreted it at this very simplistic level.

Cory wrote: "I've attempted to read this book twice, but I never gotten very far. I'm disappointed in myself, as I've read Girl, Interrupted twice and greatly enjoyed the movie.

But the reason Girl rings a bi..."

I preferred the movie version of Cuckoo's Nest, which I remember a lot more clearly than the book. Fun fact: it's Sweden's longest-running movie ever. There was this movie theater in Stockholm where it had an absolutely ridiculously long run, 1976-1987. When they reached the 10 year mark, Jack Nicholson and the gang sent them a crate of champagne.

I'm more of the Nabokov school of thought ("Good Readers") that says we shouldn't read a novel like Cuckoo's Nest to learn about the mental health practices of earlier decades.

Here's the master himself: "There is nothing wrong about the moonshine of generalization when it comes after the sunny trifles of the book have been lovingly collected. If one begins with a ready made generalization, one begins at the wrong end and travels away from the book before one has started to understand it. Nothing is more boring or more unfair to the author than starting to read, say, Madame Bovary, with the preconceived notion that it is a denunciation of the bourgeoisie."

Or to read Moby Dick to gain insight to New England whaling practices of the nineteenth century.

Or to read Cuckoo's Nest to learn about electroshock therapy...

If all the reader gets from Cuckoo's Nest is lobotomies and EST, then he's missed both the richness of its writing and the bigger ideas at work in the novel, ideas about institutions and the individual and about the nature of power, especially as it impacts gender and race. I'd suggest that neither Kesey nor Milos Forman really knows anything of worth about mental hospitals anyway. It's the magic of the worlds they create in these two powerful works that really matters.

Well, he already cited the master hisself, Wavy Gravy.

I'm just going to dock my middling rating of this middling book a star for each of Petrarchhtefhud's comments. And if he keeps commenting, Nabakov is gonna get it too.

He probably hates women, just like Kesey, so maybe you should counter him with quotes from Margaret Thatcher or something.

I don't think Ryder is right at all because sanity is just another definition created by what we perceive. Humans have a hard time accepting facts like there is no such thing as a perfect circle because the mind sees a so called circle and defines it. I am not denying that mental institutions do not have the capacity to do good, especially in light of recent shootings, but in the 1960's mental wards were a much different thing. Procrustean definitions of what was sane and what was insane were based simply on if you were an outlier of society. Homosexuality, for example, was reason to be locked away and put under shock treatment. That is not what I would call trying to help, but instead trying to, as the human mind always does, make conformity and find patterns in a world that is fairly random.

Hey, if you want to take some tips on mental health from Ken Kesey or learn about whaling from Melville, be my guest. You can get some safe driving tips from Gatsby, or learn about the Army Air Corps from Joseph Heller, but those are hardly the best reasons for reading those novels either.

Petergiaquinta wrote: "Hey, if you want to take some tips on mental health from Ken Kesey or learn about whaling from Melville, be my guest. You can get some safe driving tips from Gatsby, or learn about the Army Air Cor..."

This is a good game. May I suggest reading Henry VI, Part 1 to learn about Joan of Arc? The Divine Comedy to understand classical astronomy? Belle du Seigneur to get better at picking up girls?

Also saw "The Nest" at age 16 with my parents. In college, it became a cult favorite having been shown on campus and then on tv all in the same weekend. I can still quote memorable snippets of dialogue. As many have said here (and I agree ) the book had a different vibe. Big Nurse was malevolent as they come, and Bromden cut straight to my heart...one of KK's best characters.

This is an old conversation, I realise, but I thought I might add that Kesey himself, from what I know of his opinions on the matter, did not think that the film honoured his book and did not like the film.

But, more importantly, I agree absolutely with this statement from Petergiaquinta: I'd suggest that neither Kesey nor Milos Forman really knows anything of worth about mental hospitals anyway. It's the magic of the worlds they create in these two powerful works that really matters. Neither the book nor the film are a realistic depiction of mental health wards, then or now, any more than The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas is a documentary about the lives of sex workers.

Hey, thanks! Initially I took a lot of grief on this thread for typing that same line last year, although most of it seems to be gone now. I don't know if it was self-censored or the heavy hand of GoodReads has removed it. I was sad for a short while, but I'm a big boy and I got over it. I hope GR isn't removing banter on threads now!

But thanks again...that's the nicest thing anybody has said about me today for sure!

Petergiaquinta wrote: "Hey, thanks! Initially I took a lot of grief on this thread for typing that same line last year, although most of it seems to be gone now. I don't know if it was self-censored or the heavy hand of ..."

You're welcome!

P.S. I do think The Shining is a pretty good manual for being a caretaker of a hotel, though ;)

I haven't read either book, but I've seen both movies, and I wonder if anyone has to be right and anyone has to be wrong. I've experienced time in a mental hospital. I only rebelled against treatment for a relatively short time and without a good rational reason for doing so, but my view in retrospect would be that, while I needed to be put under some kind of restraint and the aim of the professionals was to help me, that didn't mean that the sick forms of authoritarian social interaction which can help to generate mental health problems in the wider society do not also exist and have a negative effect within mental health institutions. Also, it is worth considering that I was delusional when I was locked up. At least in the movie, Randle McMurphy is a reckless individual who committed a crime, but there is no evidence that he is psychologically unhealthy.

I loved both the movie and the book (One Flew Over the Cuckoos' Nest, I mean) and loved both. Maybe it helped that I saw the movie first. I felt the movie changed the focus of the book totally - the book has more of mythical undertones about authority and its power on citizens. And the dispassionate voice of the narrator is missing in the movie: especially, the power of the last sentence: "I been away a long time."

Well, the movie also ends with a powerful image, but as you say I guess it's different.

BTW, do you know that it was shown for 10 years straight at a Stockholm movie theater, 1976-1986? I believe it set some kind of record.

Manny wrote: "Well, the movie also ends with a powerful image, but as you say I guess it's different.

BTW, do you know that it was shown for 10 years straight at a Stockholm movie theater, 1976-1986? I believe ..."

I did not know that! There was one Hindi movie which recently went off the theatres, I don't remember which one: I think it holds the record. But 10 years is pretty impressive.

Thanks. Loved the movie too