Summary
At the start of the film, the audience is introduced to the landscape and the daily routine of the hospital. The first shot is of the great outdoors: a mountain and a sunrise to show that the story takes place in a beautiful corner Oregon. Quickly, the scene shifts to the interior of the asylum, where we see patients sleeping peacefully. A straight-faced woman, Nurse Ratched, comes through the gate and walks past several orderlies who greet her cheerfully, while a man is unstrapped from a cot. A nurse makes a plate of various pills to be administered to patients for “medication time," and patients go up to receive their medications one at a time at a window. A stone-faced Native American, "Chief" Bromden, collects his pills. We see the ordinary workings of the hospital and the way daily life unfolds there. The hospital is an orderly and routinized institution.
A car arrives at the facility, carrying a man in a black beanie, Randle McMurphy, who is escorted through the entrance. Patients observe the man from above with curiosity. Clearly McMurphy is not only a new face, but a disruptive presence at the hospital, as his general body language appears irreverent and he wears a skeptical smirk. The policemen take his handcuffs off and he laughs maniacally at his momentary freedom, dancing and kissing one of the guards on the cheek. As a guard leads him into a hall of the hospital, McMurphy observes the ward with a childlike candor, informing the somber Chief Bromden that he is very large, a rather obvious statement.
A stuttering patient, Billy Bibbit, who is playing cards with three other patients, tells McMurphy that Chief is "a deaf and dumb Indian.” McMurphy play-acts in a stereotypical Native American way towards Chief Bromden and introduces himself to Billy. Calm classical music plays in the background, giving the somewhat chaotic ward an air of respectability and elegance. Even though the patients can barely remember the rules of a simple card game, the ward's orderliness keeps them in a trance of calm and subservience. McMurphy observes the group of four playing cards, and shows Martini, one of the patients, a card with a pornographic image of a naked woman on it, to Martini's delight. McMurphy teases Martini with the card, relishing in his ability to change the atmosphere of a room without even trying.
McMurphy visits Dr. Spivey, the director of the hospital, and we learn more about his past and why he is at the hospital. McMurphy engages Spivey in small talk about a picture on his desk of himself holding a 30 pound fish. Spivey is momentarily taken with McMurphy, and it is clear that McMurphy knows how to charm his way through a situation and make someone feel comfortable. McMurphy's charm is clouded, however, by what we learn about his past and why he came to the institution. McMurphy has been sent to the hospital for being “belligerent” and "resentful towards work in general,” and that as a result he will be evaluated for mental illness. Previously, McMurphy was at a prison work farm, having been arrested five times for assault, and most recently for the statutory rape of a fifteen-year-old girl, whom he says told him she was eighteen. McMurphy tries to reason with the doctor that it is impossible to resist the body of a fifteen-year-old, that “no man alive can resist that.” In this moment, McMurphy exposes his disrespect for boundaries and authority, and his feeble attempts to reach some kind of understanding with Spivey. While on the surface Spivey seems amenable to McMurphy's reasoning, he maintains a somewhat neutral expression, and finally tells McMurphy they will keep him at the hospital to evaluate him to see if he is mentally stable.
The film rather jumps rather abruptly to a scene in which Nurse Ratched is leading the patients in a group stretch, and we begin to learn more about how mental health evaluation works at the hospital. Patients in varying states of mental distress and delusion follow Ratched's lead as she begins to lead a meeting, a group therapy session. While at first the men appear reluctant to share, Ratched persuades Harding, a buttoned up and very proper patient, to begin the meeting. The men appear hesitant and unwilling to participate, but it is clear that Ratched wields a great amount of power among them, a power dynamic that McMurphy observes with skeptical interest.
The therapy session reveals a great deal about the power structures in the ward and Ratched's manipulative tendencies. Mr. Harding talks about how his wife made him feel mentally unwell because she drew stares from men on the street. Generally paranoid about her seeking out sexual attention outside their marriage, Harding was driven to seek professional help about his unrest and jealousy. Nurse Ratched asks if anyone would like to comment, while McMurphy flips his deck of cards aggressively towards her, subtly challenging her steely sovereignty. Ratched struggles to find someone who will begin the discussion, and asks Harding to talk about why he suspects his wife of cheating, as the camera zooms in rapidly on her and the female nurse sitting next to her. Harding can only speculate about his wife’s infidelity, and becomes perturbed when he is questioned about his relationship to his wife, insisting that he is not just talking about his wife, but about life in general, about more general, abstract principles. As Harding gets more and more upset about Ratched's inquiry, the men begin to tease him, and a childlike patient, Cheswick, defends him. The men imply that Harding's wife strays because he is a homosexual, and he becomes defensive as the men, particularly the markedly aggressive Taber, send homophobic taunts his way. Their argument crescendos into chaos, to McMurphy's amusement. His amusement is soon replaced, however, by disturbance and discomfort, as he locks eyes with the somber and dour Ratched.
Analysis
The beginning of the film introduces the viewer to the environment in which the institution is placed (rural Oregon), the mental institution itself, Dr. Spivey's office, and finally the ward in which most of the action will occur. The institution is stark and formal, with echo-y hallways and imposing pillars. Quiet and stillness is interrupted by the unstrapping of patients from their cots and the ominous clicking of footsteps. McMurphy's arrival is an immediate disruption, as the early shots of him obscure his face, and he is shot from above emerging from a vehicle. The audience is put in the perspective of the anticipatory patient, watching McMurphy enter the ward from a window above, through obstructions. McMurphy is cast as an outsider among outsiders from the minute he enters the film, and we are aware that his presence at the ward will shake up and likely disturb the dynamics of Ratched's tightly-controlled ward.
The beginning of the film also introduces all of the central characters, and shows a little bit about their respective roles in the community. Billy Bibbit is a sweet but troubled young man at the hospital, eager to befriend McMurphy, but terrified of doing anything wrong. He is immediately taken in by McMurphy's rebellious energy, as it contrasts with his more retiring demeanor. Chief is a misunderstood giant, unfairly parodied by his white companions. Dr. Spivey is a concerned but aloof authority figure, who displays a puzzling opacity when presented with the disrespectful McMurphy. Nurse Ratched keeps the ward in order and wields a mysteriously imposing power, in spite of her apparently soft touch.
We learn perhaps the most about McMurphy in this section of the film; his antics and performance upon being released from the handcuffs establishes him as a clowning, irreverent free spirit, dangerous and wild. Additionally, his discussion with Dr. Spivey reveals the ways that he is freedom-loving, while also willing to game the system in any way he can. Statutory rape is a serious offense, but McMurphy remains remorseless about the incident and only tries to get the director of the hospital to agree with him that any man in the presence of a naked fifteen-year-old would have done what he did. Unrepentant and always looking for an out, McMurphy ignores consequence in favor of freedom. While he is yet to be proven to be insane, he is clearly disrespectful of the rules that try to bind him to an unsettling extent. McMurphy is ruled by his libido and his instinct.
A pertinent tension blossoms early in the film in the way that McMurphy's free sexuality contrasts with the solemn and controlled character of Nurse Ratched. McMurphy's crass and shameless sexuality exhibits itself when he shows Martini the playing card with the dirty picture on it. Martini is delighted by the image, and the viewer gets the sense that the men rarely think about sex or desire, as they are inhibited by the confines of the ward. Under Ratched's authority, desire and libido are discouraged and frowned upon. McMurphy's freedom and irreverence disrupts the prevailing rules of the ward. In this way, Ratched and McMurphy are shown to be complete opposites. Where Ratched is rule abiding, measured and severe, McMurphy is playful, wild, and uncontrolled. The ward runs on the rules and restrictions of Nurse Ratched's temperament, and McMurphy is clearly a threat to its strictness and regularity.
The group therapy scene reveals the deep power structures at play in the ward, and how Nurse Ratched controls the men. Nurse Ratched humiliates Harding by relentlessly pressing him about his mental issues and his paranoia about his wife's infidelity. She urges him to open up more about his pain and fear, and does not back off when this therapeutic tactic visibly humiliates him. Talking about his marital problems in front of the other men, who only make fun of him, causes Harding deep distress. The most puzzling part of Ratched's authority is her ability to command respect, in spite of her otherwise humiliating and demoralizing tactics. The patients are demonstrably pliant to her demands and questioning, even if they are afraid of her. Ratched is a dictatorial leader, invoking fear in her followers. She is an instrument of the controlling structures of the institution. Furthermore, the men certainly do not exhibit the irreverence of McMurphy, who flips cards at Ratched and laughs maniacally at the proceedings. McMurphy finds it all perversely amusing up until the moment he begins to see how controlling Ratched really is. They hold eye contact at the end of the scene in a kind of face off, having each met their match.
