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Fortnight Publications Ltd.
Films: One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (New Vic)Review by: Robert JohnstoneFortnight, No. 129 (Jun. 18, 1976), p. 16Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25545885 .
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This content downloaded from 195.34.79.176 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 22:47:24 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
16/FORTNIGHT
at one act festivals are Winners j
and Losers, which are not really I one act plays at all, being the g two parts of Brian Friel's Lovers. ] Ulster's newest drama group, i
the Posthorn Players, winners of
the Belfast Festival, presented Losers. Andy and Hannah are i
middle-aged lovers whose at
tempts at courtship are frustrat
ed by Hannah's bed-ridden .
mother. Denis Smyth pointed out that there was a great
danger of playing this as farce, while Friel wrote it as a humorous play with sad
undertones. The company were
inclined to overplay and lapse into domestic comedy. He
praised Richard Mills' control and excellent timing. Lilian
Levers as the mother was suit
ably tyrannical. Slemish Players were the
winners, and will represent Northern Ireland at Colwyn Bay on 26 June. Denis Smyth summed up by saying that the
evening was an interesting pro
gramme which had given him a
chance to reassure his feelings towards contemporary drama.
Roy Larmour
ISFILMSFILMSFILM SFILMSFILMSFILM ^_ ISFILMSFILMSFILM
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ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST
(New Vic) The reviews said that Milos
Forman's new film was an
allegory. So I expected to find
the mental hospital presented as
a microcosm of society. We're
all mad or have to feign madness
to get by, nurses represent
authority, and so on. But One
Flew Over is more impressively
complex and fresher than I'd
expected from the reviews.
While the socio-political meta
phor stands up, there are other,
subtler, and perhaps more
interesting analogies to be
drawn from it.
Ken Kesey, upon whose novel
the film is loosely based, was one of the heralds of psyche delia. He and his pranksters,
equipped with LSD and day-glo, inhabited the magic bus Tom
Wolfe chronicled in The Electric
:.+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ :.. ..: .. ..:+
s:.+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.. . . ...... ...:
Kool-Acid Test. The interest is,
not surprisingly therefore, not
only in the political undertones
but also in the mental tricks we
learn to cope with other people and with the personal restric
tions they impose. Or perhaps I
should say the interest of the
screenwriters, since Kesey dis
owns the film and is suing Forman and Co. Maybe he
regrets his youthful disregard of
square things like copyright. When McMurphy (Jack Nic
holson) is transferred from a
prison farm to the hospital,
although he's not even techni
cally insane but shamming, he
begins to disrupt the placid routine. He conducts a guerilla
war against martinette Nurse
Ratched and her soul-destroying adherence to discipline. His
point fe that "the rules" mean
everybody has to be miserable
because it would be too much
trouble to change for a few.
Soon the patients?at least
those who can communicate at
all, which is exactly half?take
him as their champion and rely on him for their enjoyment. His
efforts to bring things to life offers them self-respect. They have surrendered that, most
being voluntary patients, but
gaining confidence from Mc
Murphy they begin to ask why they acquiesce.
One of the several outstanding achievements of the film is the
way Forman makes the loonies
interesting and likeable without
watering down their lunacy (it's a very funny film), and at the
same time presenting Ratched
as the dreaded hateful bitch the patients see in counterpoint to
the conscientious nurse who
tries desperately to control 18
madmen while carefully conceal
ing her growing emotional
involvement with them as
people, not just cases.
The acting is superb, but
Nicholson ?of course! ? , Will
Sampson as Chief Bromden and
Louise Fletcher as Ratched are
extra special. Forman and his
actors studied a real mental
hospital, even using actual
patients and staff, and the totally credible naturalism shows the
benefit.
However, I'd just like to note a
dissatisfaction. Because the film
is so uncompromisingly accurate
about the surface of lunatic
asylums, the implication of the
plot that McMurphy's disruption is beneficial seems even more
dubiods in context. And as the
hippies, Kesey's heirs, discover
ed in the wider society, a good heart and revolutionary spirit are
not enough on their own to
guarantee any lasting good. The
authority of Nurse Ratched is by and large for the patients' bene
fit, even more than Jim
Callaghan or Gerry Ford think
they are acting on our behalf. Or
maybe Forman, an exiled Czech, was thinking of the Prague Spring being snuffed out by Russian tanks when he filmed the aftermath of lobotomy. Power is not only tyranny over
the few (or the many) however well-intentioned, but also a
temptation to arbitrary and
unnecessary crime.
While I'm on the subject of
misleading reviews, and while I
have the power of print, I can't
resist the temptation to chuck a
squib at the Belfast Telegraph cinema critic. When previewing
Night Moves (at the Avenue last week) he gave the impression that its co-feature Turkish
Delight (directed by Paul Verhoeven) was a run-of-the
mill skinflick. Don't see it he counselled. While the title and
the posters gave that impression
anyone who had actually seen it
would have known what an
interesting film it really was.
Robert Johnstone
ICMUSICMUSICMU *\ i ICMUSICMUSICMUnr. f\ V I
ICMUSICMUSICMU^gWj)
THE FUTURE OF THE ULSTER ORCHESTRA
The Arts Council of Northern Ireland issued a statement last
week to the effect that they
accepted the recommendation
of an independent working
party's report on the provision of
orchestral music in Northern Ire
land. The Arts Council now has
to see whether the recommen
dation can ever become more
than merely that. What is
advocated in the report is, in its
own words, a 'merger of the
BBC Northern Ireland Orchestra
with the Ulster Orchestra under
a new independent management with a guaranteed contract of
BBC broadcasts (say, 48 with the full orchestra and 48 with a
Chamber Orchestra each year) for a long-term period.' Now to
some extent we have been here
before, and it's hard to be all that
sanguine about the prospects of
getting any agreement between
the various interested bodies.
But it might be worth setting out the thinking behind the report's
main conclusions, as one of the
most important interested bod
ies is any potential audience.
It must be said that the Report is a thoroughly workmanlike
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