#33 ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’

Rebellion, Redemption, and the Institutional Mutilation of the Feminine

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) is widely hailed as a masterwork of American cinema—an anti-authoritarian triumph about individuality versus the system. And, yes, it’s powerful. It’s devastating. It’s unforgettable. But it’s also a deeply gendered fairy tale, in which freedom looks like a sweaty, sexually aggressive man yelling in a room, and oppression looks like a cold, emotionally competent woman doing her job.

Jack Nicholson plays R.P. McMurphy, a grinning cyclone of chaos dropped into a mental institution full of medicated docility. He drinks, he gambles, he sexually harasses the nurses. He’s “fun.” The film wants us to love him—wants us to see him as a necessary force of liberation. Never mind that he’s in the institution for statutory rape. That detail is shrugged off like a colorful backstory. Boys will be boys, even if the girl was 15.

McMurphy immediately locks horns with Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), the head nurse and symbolic she-devil of institutional authority. She’s calm, controlled, and emotionally impenetrable—so naturally, she’s the villain. The film portrays her as a castrating force, stripping the men of their agency, their joy, their… erections? Her sin isn’t cruelty. It’s that she doesn’t coddle. She won’t let the men run wild. She upholds structure. She enforces rules. And for this, the film burns her in effigy.

This isn’t a story about mental health. It’s a story about how fragile masculinity feels about women who say no. McMurphy’s rebellion is framed as noble—even when it includes smuggling in prostitutes and liquor. Nurse Ratched’s discipline is framed as evil—even when it’s literally her job. The climactic battle between them isn’t just philosophical. It’s gendered war. And the cost? A woman sexually assaulted, a man lobotomized, and a room full of traumatized patients treated as set dressing for one man’s Christ-like martyrdom.

Let’s talk about that assault: in a fit of rage after a beloved patient commits suicide, McMurphy strangles Nurse Ratched to near-death. It’s brutal. Visceral. And filmed in a way that clearly expects the audience to cheer. A woman enforces the rules of a broken system, so she must be physically punished—her blouse torn open, her control shattered. Justice, apparently.

Yes, the performances are brilliant. Nicholson seethes charisma. Fletcher is a masterclass in minimalist menace. The cinematography turns the ward into a battleground of the soul. But One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest isn’t just anti-institution—it’s anti-feminine authority, anti-boundary, anti-anything that tells the rebel man-child to grow up.

In the end, McMurphy loses his mind but gains myth. He’s lobotomized, murdered in an act of mercy, and transformed into legend. Meanwhile, Nurse Ratched returns—wounded, weakened, silent. The film calls this balance. I call it a warning.

3.5 out of 5 stolen cigarettes
(One for the performances. One for the score. One for Chief’s final, wordless liberation. Half a star for being gutsy enough to turn male rage into religion—but deducting the rest for throwing every woman in its way under the bus and calling it freedom.)