Released on November 19th, 1975.
Coach W.A. Wall, our health teacher during my sophomore year of high school, told us about this movie one morning in class. The subject at hand was mental health. He said that One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was a movie we would do well to watch sometime. Coach Wall said that it would make us laugh, it would make us cry, and that it would downright disturb us at times.
About ten years later I got my first DVD player for Christmas. As I was starting to build up a personal movie library I spotted this film's DVD. Remembering what Coach Wall had said about it, I decided it was worth taking a chance on and so I bought the disc.
Wall was right. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was all of those things and more. And it very quickly became one of the best movies I've ever seen.
Sometimes I've been asked, given my many experiences in the realm of mental health, if real life is anything like it is in this movie. I can happily report that we have come a very long way from the treatment methods depicted in Cuckoo's Nest. I've certainly never had anything like that kind of experience. Even the most seemingly hopeless of patients are now treated with dignity and compassion. I do believe that there are some cases which are going to forever seen as impossible. But I've never met a mental health professional - either in my capacity as having a mental health care career or in being treated myself as someone with bipolar disorder - who did not cling to at least some semblance of a belief that there can be hope for anyone.
I think that One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest might have played a part in altering the perception of mental health treatment. By the mid-Seventies the field was already on its way toward its modern form. The movie's considerable audience, critical acclaim and that it swept up so many prizes (it won the Academy Award for Best Picture among many other honors) cast a new light upon psychiatric medicine. It came at the perfect time for the field. That alone if nothing else merits noting this anniversary.
I've got nothing else to do this afternoon. And I'm saving continuing my rewatch of Stranger Things season four for this evening. Think I'll celebrate the occasion and watch One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest again.
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