Lately I saw the film "One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest" (1975) for the first time. It kind of impressed me ...

If you're asking now, why I'm writing about this film in my journal instead of telling something about my art, I've to explain, that my understanding of art is a reflexive one: Art is rather something I just do, than something I think about. Or in other words: Art is not only painting, taking photographs, writing fictional and poetic texts and so on, but also critizising pictures, photos, prose, lyrics,... and - films. The theory and the practical work are never sharply seperated.

Now. When I read the text on the cover of the fim, I thought, that the doctors in the psychatrical hospital will be clearly sadistic characters, because it was said something about electroshocks and a herolike 'fool' (McMurphy = Jack Nicholson) fighting against this sadistic establishment.

When I saw the film itself, the message wasn't that 'clear'. McMurphy is not only a likeable hero, but also a rapist. The doctores are rather sadistic, than zombie-like. It seems as if they try to have no emotions, because only this distinguishes them from the fools. It seems as if they always try to repress emotions. They watch them and fight them, if they grow too strong.
Not the fools as persons were dominated, but the unpersonal energy or power of human emotions. Even the elektroshock-therapy is energetical.

This is the main point of the film, I think: Psychic disease in this film is thought as a illness in respect to energetical processes. They are lacking or not restraint. The Native American "chief" is a person with great strengh or energy or agency, but he never shows it. He knows, that strong people like his father become destroyed in the society. But that's interessting: it is the society outside the hospital.

The chief stays in the hospital, because here he can hide his strengh. But than comes McMurphy - a man with much energy; he shows it and never is ashamed. He is no fool - he is just a person with strong feelings and power - and he tries to empower the fools. He shows them ways to do what they want without being ashamed. For him it is not 'foolish' to do what one wants himself; on the contrary: it is the only healty or intelligent way of acting.

For McMurphy there is a different definition of mental health than for the doctores - and that is the core of the conflict: For McMurphy Mildred Ratched, a doctor, makes Billy ill, when she makes him ashamed for doing what he wants - sleeping with a woman. And really: Billy kills himself. For Ratched emotions and especially emotional acts are foolish - but McMurphy thinks that they are healthy, if they are a product of one's will. In his opinion Ratched killed Billy and so he tries to kill Ratched. This was interpreted by the doctores as a dangerous emotional act and repressed for ever: The doctores operated on McMurphy's brain and he cannot communicate or move any more. His power will never be acted out any more.

The chief now sees: Even in the hospital the society destroys strong characters. He goes away to find another, saver place... and he takes McMurphy to another place.