One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

There are not a lot of actor that find a role that they were meant to play, and it's even rarer to find one that they were born to be in. Jack Nicholson seems to have done this on a few occasions, and the first time that this happened was with the role R.P. McMurphy in this powerful award winning film. From the very beginning, this film doesn't pull any punches, and at the time, 1975, showed the true conditions that people were enduring in our mental hospitals around the country.
R.P. McMurphy thinks that he's come up with a way to beat the system, if he fakes that he's insane he gets moved to a hospital from the state prison, but once there his plan start's to fall apart and he may lose him freedom permanently. The realistic situations that are played out in this film are at times so emotional that its hard to watch them, but knowing that they are reflections of the life that patients had to endure in these institutions makes it even harder to see. About 80% of the movie takes place on one floor of the hospital, but with the way that the scenes were shot you don't get the feeling of claustrophobia that some films get when using only one room or area. There are some familiar faces in this film that most people will recognize, there's Louise Fletcher, Danny DeVito, and Christopher Lloyd just to name a few. This was Lloyd's debut into film and after seeing him in this role you can truly see the chemistry he has with the camera and the other actors on the set.
In 1975 this film swept the top five major Academy Awards, and after all these years there is still no question that it deserved every one of them. I've seen this film dozens of times and it still strikes me as a poignant movie that should be watched at film school for students and members of the mental health profession, in both places so many things can be learned from the interactions that are on the screen. All in all this is a very dark film, and not one to be watched unless you are prepared for the feelings that you will most likely have at the conclusion of this film that shows us all what camaraderie and friendship truly means.