“One flew over the cuckoo’s nest”
Transcript
• Assess how the audience is positioned to think and feel by the use of cinematic techniques in the film.
The director Milos Forman uses specific film techniques and themes to make the audience think about and have feelings for the characters. Milos Forman gets the audience emotionally engaged in the film by creating characters that the audience develops feelings for. Forman introduces us to the two major characters of the film, R.P.McMurphy and Nurse Ratched, and what they represent. Some of the underlying ideas and values of the film include: the anti-hero or individual against the establishment, power struggle and freedom.
Right from the beginning, McMurphy challenges the existing rules and regulations of the institution as being “there, just for the sake of being there”. Ratched and McMurphy recognize that each is the other's worst enemy: an authority figure who equates sanity with correct behaviour, and a misfit who is charismatic enough to dismantle the system simply by living as he pleases. The first value represented in the film is “the anti-hero against the establishment” McMurphy has no respect for authority and is generally defiant to the rules of the institution in an attempt to raise spirits. His constant optimism and reckless defiance to the out of date rules in the institution can be very uplifting. An example of this was the wild party with hookers and booze, the music was relaxed which made the patients content and the alcohol made them merry. Forman used a panning shot showing the drunken patients happily dancing and the trashed ward.
Another value is the constant struggle for power, throughout the film there is major conflict between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched. Forman uses close-ups of their faces, concentrating on eyes and mouths to symbolise their conflict. There are two major scenes in the movie that portray the conflict of McMurphy and Ratched.
The first is the fight...