This film keeps rare company. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975, Fantasy Films Production; United Artists) is one of only three winners of the “Big Five,” the quintet of top Academy Awards (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay). Out of nine total nominations, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest only won those five most coveted awards: Best Picture, Director for Milos Forman, Actor for Jack Nicholson as R. P. McMurphy, Actress for Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched, and Writing [Screenplay Adapted from Other Material]). It did not take home trophies in the following categories for which it was nominated: Film Editing, Cinematography, Music (Original Score), and Actor in a Supporting Role for Brad Dourif as Billy Bibbit. The only previous Big Five winner was 1934’s hilarious It Happened One Night. It took a mere 41 years to duplicate that romantic comedy’s feat. But One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest could not be more different from It Happened One Night. Granted, there are more than a few comical parts, but this film is pretty deeply disturbing. And it very much means to be so.

Ken Kesey, author and early proponent of LSD

Based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Ken Kesey, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest is the story of R. P. McMurphy, a criminal of sorts, who pleads insanity in the belief that the asylum will be more comfortable than the prison where he has work duty. How very mistaken McMurphy is. Through McMurphy’s experiences in the ward for the mentally ill (and in his epic conflict with Nurse Ratched), viewers of the film also become privy to the horrendous conditions and treatments such patients endured. Kesey came to his novel in a very interesting (and rather illegal) way. While in college at Stanford and working at the Veterans’ Administration Hospital, he volunteered to participate in a study that was funded by the CIA. The study, a top-secret military experiment, was dubbed Project MKULTRA; and it involved analyzing the effects of psychoactive drugs (LSD, mescaline, cocaine, etc.)—on human subjects. Kesey was convinced that LSD “was a tool useful for transcending rational consciousness and attaining a higher level of consciousness,” and he continued to experiment with the drug even after his participation in the government study.

His fascination with the idea of altered consciousness led him to interview residents at the hospital where he worked, many of whom were considered mentally ill. To the contrary, Kesey refused to categorize his interviewees as “insane,” but rather believed that “society had pushed them out because they did not fit the conventional ideas of how people were supposed to act and behave.” Several of these patients gave Kesey inspiration for the characters in his famous novel—much of which he wrote while under the influence of mind-altering drugs.

McMurphy enthusiastically participates in a group therapy session at the asylum.

Kesey’s “Acid Tests,” elaborate parties that included drugs, strobe lights, fluorescent paint, and his favorite band (the Grateful Dead), epitomized the 1960s to the extreme. After his drug-abuse struggles eventually led him to prison, Kesey’s life changed; and he mostly spent the 1970s to the time of his death as a family man on a farm in Oregon. But R. P. McMurphy, the protagonist of Kesey’s most famous novel, himself a wild man not averse to partying, bridges the psychedelic 60s and our current blog decade of the 1970s, revealing a society beset with continuing drug use, free sex, and unhesitating violence–along with the insecurity, despair, and desperation that accompany them. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest certainly provides its viewers with insight into 1960s/70s perceptions of the mentally ill and a flawed health care system, but it also speaks loudly about the human condition in general, which makes it–Big Five or not–pretty fascinating, in my opinion.

For more thoughts on One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and its significance, please check out the full post this weekend!