Film Overview: One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest's R.P McMurphy

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Recommended: Treatment in American prisons

The mentally ill, are given refugee in facilities also know as asylums. Although these facilities are meant to help these people, in 1975, they were detrimental because they restrict choice, and do not provide a meaningful life. This is depicted in the movie One flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. In the movie, the protagonist R.P McMurphy, Randle Patrick McMurphy, is a current inmate at the state penitentiary for statutory rape and other crimes. He is a rugged, scummy, lazy man, who is in his late 40. He is a great manipulator and to avoid the work set for him at the penitentiary he hatches his newest plan; McMurphy fakes mental illness. Of course the penitentiary does not believe Mr. McMurphy, so they send him to the state mental facility for evaluation. Here he meets the other patients that he will be spending the next couple of weeks with on Ward B. McMurphy also meets the person who will challenge his freewill. This movie shows the struggle of man who fights for free choice, and purpose.
This facility is very regimented much like any state run facility. Decorated with bright white walls, and filled with seemingly solemn patients. As the patients enter the facility, they are forced to live in a structured environment ran by Nurse Ratchet. On Ward B, she keeps the men on a medication regiment of different tranquilizers, meant to keep the men subdued and calm, along with her schedule meant to keep the men on task. If these men refuse their medication or to stick to the schedule, they are sent for treatment, which can range from electroshock therapy to a frontal lobotomy. Nurse Ratchet is very kind when speaking to the men, but not telling them their medication or giving them choices, effects ontology. In Barnet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia...

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...nyone tries, the individual must make his own decisions, and decide what type of life he or she may live, and they must try to achieve authenticity, even when the present situation is difficult, their attitude will help them achieve this purposeful life.

Works Cited

Berardinelli, James. "Reelviews: Berardinelli Sees Film." Reelviews Movie Reviews. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Jan. 2014.
"Existentialism." Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia. 4th ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1996. 334-35. Print.
Killinger, John. "Existentalism and Human Freedom." The English Journal 50 (1961): 303-13. JSTOR. Web. 12 Aug. 2008.
One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. Dir. Milos Forman. Perf. Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, William Redfield. Warner Bros, 2010. DVD.
Stierlin, Helm. "Existentialism Meets Psychotherapy." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 24 (1963): 215-39. Jstor. Web. 7 Feb. 2014.

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