Feature One: One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)……. 133 min
Feature Two: The Shawshank Redemption (1994)….……. 142 min
Combined Length: ………………………………………………… 275 min (4h 35min)
One Flew Over The Cuckoo‘s Nest.
Directed By: Milos Forman
Written By: Lawrence Hauben, Bo Goldman, Ken Kesey (novel) & Dale Wasserman (play).
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Christopher Lloyd & Danny DeVito.
The Shawshank Redemption.
Directed By: Frank Darabont.
Written By: Stephen King (short story) & Frank Darabont (screenplay)
Starring: Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, Bob Gunton & James Whitmore
Why Not, Feel Free.
Even today, there are places in this world where a person can have their personal liberty entirely expunged and placed in the hands of an indomitable institution. These two films test its main characters ability to withstand this pressure, struggle to maintain personal identity and out manoeuvre their monolithic masters. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest pits charismatic rouge Jack Nicholson against the mental health institution personified by the dogmatic Nurse Ratched. Next, we see a quiet and reserved Tim Robbins submerged into a mire of brutality and corruption under the watch of Warden Norton in The Shawshank Redemption.
Ideal Viewing Conditions.
Best viewed in a small, bare room with few basic facilities and a bucket sitting in one corner. With nothing but your own thoughts bouncing off of the featureless, thickly-painted brickwork you feel as though the empty hours stretching out ahead of you might just prove the last straw in breaking the back of your sanity. As desperation begins to well, you remember the two DVD’s stashed away in your hidey-hole, concealed from the eyes of authority who have placed them on the banned list and provided by the man who knows how to get things. Apprehensively, you slide the first disk into the player, turn the volume down and press play. At first, you worry that you may be discovered but soon you relax, knowing that the large metal door that you sit behind is not going to open for some time. [Note: this Double Bill also works with videotape. Oh, and don’t think too hard on the fact that this imaginary cell contains a DVD player but no proper toilet.]
Soundtrack Highlights.
Neither film contains any featured songs as such but both use music as a plot point. In One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest McMurphy and Nurse Ratched clash over the volume of a record player playing in the day room. Protesting that he can’t hear himself think, it provides an example of how the environment is gradually driving McMurphy crazy. In The Shawshank Redemption, a record player is also used but this time for a different effect. Andy Dufresne takes possession of a collection of records and decides to play one (“Duettino – Sull’aria” from the opera “The Marriage of Figaro” by Mozart) over the PA system. The inmates that hear it have a moment of freedom (though it costs Andy his own) and it provides the perfect salve to the common fear of becoming institutionalised.
Also, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest uses music, not just to overwhelm but in a more structural way. The film opens on a landscape shot (an important symbol of openness and freedom) with a distinctive piece of music playing. The film later closes on another landscape shot, over which a piece of music plays which echoes the one from the beginning. Finally, the end credits run over silence, which has a dislocating effect on the viewer.
Six Degrees of Separation.
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest gives us a debut performance from Christopher Lloyd who would go on to star in Who Framed Rodger Rabbit? alongside Bob Hoskins. From Toon Town, Hoskins would later find himself in Neverland playing against Robin Williams’ ‘all-grown-up’ Peter Pan in Hook. Later, Williams would take the lead in the bio-pic Patch Adams (which starts out in a mental institution which is not too dissimilar from the one shown in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest) where he soon encounters an authoritarian Dean played by Bob Gunton, who is the low-down, nasty piece of work Warden Norton in The Shawshank Redemption.
If you use Steven King however, (which I regard as cheating because seriously how many King adaptations are there in the world?) you can do this in one move i.e. Both Jack Nicholson and Scatman Crothers were in The Shining which was based on King’s novel.
Ambiguous Associations. [Spoilers May Follow]
Clearly these two films explore similar themes about freedom and the efforts of one individual acting against and within a powerful institution, but they also contain many contrasts [see ‘Soundtrack Highlights’]. The most prominent similarity that they share is that both are adapted from written works but moreover they both take a departure with one major character. In One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest the whole point of view shifts from Chief Bromden (the original narrator of the novel) to R.P. McMurphy (a move that annoyed Ken Kesey). In The Shawshank Redemption, it is the narrator himself (Red) that changes from a white Irishman into Morgan Freeman (who is not).
One contrast is the way each story deals with control and gender identity. Shawshank gives us The Sisters who, despite their name, embody uncapped masculinity; subsisting on a diet of violence and sex. They take what they want by force and exert their will through violence, which are considered male traits, but many of their fellow inmates don’t regard them as ‘men’ (or human for that matter). The guards also express this by maintaining order through violence, particularly in the case of Captain Hadley. (It is worth noting that The Shawshank Redemption has practically no female characters at all; with a woman asking for Brooks to double bag her groceries providing pretty much the only female voice in the whole film.) One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest on the other hand deals with the systematic emasculation of the patients by the dominant and controlling Nurse Ratched. Many of the characters, including McMurphy himself, have found themselves in the hospital due to problems in their relationships with women. The cure provided for this is to isolate these men into an immersive environment where any expression of violence, anger, lust or any other ‘masculine’ trait is met with severe punishment. This is later highlighted with Billy’s reaction to his mother being mentioned. When the girls are introduced into this environment, courtesy of McMurphy, this dynamic is upset irreparably causing it to be reset and reasserted using extreme measures.
Another contrast, related to the one of control, is the notion of freedom. In each film, a truth is revealed which forces us to reassess our ideas on freedom, who is entitled to posses it and who is entitled to take it away. In One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, we discover that most of the patients, unlike McMurphy, are not committed but voluntary. They are not incarcerated in any way and could theoretically walk out the front door at any moment but have instead elected to make prisoners of themselves out of fear. Cheswick tests these freedoms when his right to have his own cigarettes (a common currency in both films) becomes a contentious issue and he is punished for claiming his right to them. In The Shawshank Redemption, it is revealed that Andy is in fact innocent, as he protested, and should never have been locked up in the first place.
Dufresne remains a guest of Shawshank even after this is revealed thanks to another contrast, one that concerns the righteousness and corruptibility of the ‘good’ characters who run each institution. It is down to Warden Norton’s tax evasion and various other under-the-table deals, all of which Andy has intimate knowledge of, that drives him to knowingly keep an innocent man in prison for fear that he will spill the beans upon release. The staff of the mental institution on the other hand are not corrupt but many of their methods and practices, particularly when viewed with a modern eye, are not ‘right’ either. Even for its day, issuing a punishment (which include electro shock therapy and lobotomy) and calling it treatment cannot have been seen as a good thing (even though things like electro shock therapy were misguidedly considered, and commonly used, as a ‘genuine’ treatment). Also there is Nurse Ratched herself who obstructs the proposal to move McMurphy back into the penal system (where he rightly belongs) and persuades the board to keep him on the ward. We are not explicitly told her reasons for doing this but we are left to infer that perhaps she has her own motivations (maybe she refuses to admit defeat to a man like McMurphy and is dedicated to winning the mental struggle they are engaged in).
Further Reading.
There are plenty of ‘prison’ movies out there to choose from, so here are a few to get you started:
- One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is based on Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel, which is well worth the read if only for the trippy hallucinations experienced by our narrator which were omitted from the film.
- How could you not mention The Prisoner (1967-8) on a list like this? The original series sees Patrick McGoohan locked in a weekly struggle to retain his sense of personal identity in the face of overwhelming efforts to dehumanise, control, manipulate, contain and psychologically break him. It really does test what it is to be a free man.
- A rare musical example would be Johnny Cash At San Quentin (1969) [particularly if you can find the footage filmed by Granada Television] in which ‘the man in black’ performs in the belly of the notorious prison.
- Just falling out of the Double Bill itself (due only to the fact that I know the two featured films a little better than this one) is Papillon (1973) which is often considered the quintessential prison / escape film (alongside that other escape film starring Steve McQueen)
- For a more light-hearted (although, at times, just as poignant) approach to prison life see Porridge (1974-7) starring perennial favourite Ronnie Barker in one of his best-loved roles.
- The Shawshank Redemption is a pretty faithful adaptation of Steven King’s novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, which is included in Different Seasons (1982).
- If you don’t mind a little sci-fi silliness thrown into the mix then you might have a look at Fortress (1992) in which Christopher Lambert bids to escape from a high-tech futuristic prison.
- Sleepers (1996), while not exclusively set in a prison / sanatorium, it does focus a good deal of its plot on the adolescent detention centre that the boys are sent to, as well as the corruption and brutality that is hidden there.
- Another Steven King adaptation set in prison (this time with his trademark supernatural twist) is The Green Mile (1999). Particularly noteworthy since it was directed by Frank Darabont and stars Tom Hanks – who at one point was in the running for the role of Andy Dufresne but instead decided to film a small movie called Forrest Gump.
- Finally, for more tales from inside the metal health institution seek out the TV drama Poppy Shakespeare (2008) based on Clare Allan’s novel (2006). Refreshingly, for a list like this, the central characters are women.
Summary.
If you do decide to watch these films back to back then you might end up feeling as though you have served time yourself. However, you will be treated to four plus hours of cinema of impeccable calibre (One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest on its own being part of an exclusive group of films to have won all five of the ‘major’ Academy Awards). Also, if you do, take a walk through a park afterwards, if only to celebrate the fact that you can.
Random Insults to Sanity 