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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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

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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

:.+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ :.. ..: .. ..:+

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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

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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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