Jackson Bragman, Staff Writer
In 1960s Czechoslovakia, a young filmmaker named Milos Forman spearheaded a campaign that became known as the Czech New Wave: a movement that used satire and dark humor to take aim at the communist regime the country had just fallen under.
One of the Czech New Wave’s most formative early films was Forman’s “The Fireman’s Ball” (1967), which zeroes in on a gala (gone wrong) thrown by a small-town volunteer fire department celebrating their newly retired fire chief. It served as a satirical allegory for the incompetence and disingenuous nature of the Czech government that Roger Ebert explains far more effectively than I could.
Following the Czech government’s heavy censorship of “Fireman’s Ball,” Forman immigrated to the U.S. to start his film making career stateside, but refused to shed his rebellious nature. When assessing Forman, the “auteur,” it’s clear that he was most interested in telling the stories of defiant characters challenging bureaucratic systems, just as he himself did. Stories of society’s most eccentric who tossed social norms to the side. Stories of a hippie Vietnam draft dodger, a coarse porno magazine publisher and a genre bending stand up comedian, all trailblazers alike.
In this series, we will impart on a technical and thematic exploration of the work of one of film history’s most important, and most underappreciated filmmakers. To do that, we will take a look at what I believe to be the five quintessential films in the discography of a two-time Academy Award winner, the patriarch of the Czech New Wave and one of cinema’s most daring raconteurs.
Welcome… to the Milos Forman Starter Pack.
“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975) stars Jack Nicholson as Randle “Mac” McMurphy, a career criminal who fakes mental illness to evade prison labor. Mac is moved to a mental hospital where–while under the thumb of the subtly sadistic Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher)–he rallies his fellow inmates to push back against the oppressive system they live within.
Most of Forman’s movies tend to center on epic lead performances, but his greatest strength as a filmmaker lies in the attention to detail he pays to how his main characters interact with his ensembles. Granted, it is extremely silly to not spend much time highlighting Nicholson’s performance, which is widely heralded as one of the best ever, the film is brought to life by the performances of its supporting cast.
“Cuckoo’s Nest” features an outfit of supporting performances that could have justifiably taken up an entire Best Supporting Actor Oscars category. Billy Bibbit (Brad Dourif) is shy and speaks with a stutter. Charlie Cheswick (Sydney Lassick) is empathic, but deeply naive. Dale Harding (William Redfield) is articulate, but emotionally unstable. It is a mental hospital motley crew of sorts, each individually interesting on their own, but collectively greater than the sum of their parts.
Very few directors can go vignette for vignette with Forman. There is a scene in which Mac commandeers a bus outside the hospital and treats his fellow patients to an escapade in which they board a charter boat and set sail on the Pacific Ocean. Mac teaches the others how to fish (an obvious, yet charming metaphor) in a wonderfully chaotic sequence that features a series of long close-ups on characters who are not speaking and have nothing to do with the scene’s primary action. It is through the film’s many moments like this that we feel immersed in its world, and develop an intimate appreciation for each character’s unique quirks and limitations. All the while, the melodic score offers a droll juxtaposition to the pandemonium aboard the ship.
“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” takes aim, not only at America’s mental health care system, but his own Czechoslavakian government’s oppressive communist regime. The patients’ bedroom doors are locked during the day and their cigarettes are rationed by the nurses.
When Mac petitions for the group to be able to watch that night’s World Series game, instead of sticking to their usual tedious evening routine, Nurse Ratched puts it to a group vote. Of the 19 patients in the mental hospital, Ratched knows that ten suffer from chronic conditions and are unable to understand what’s going on and what they’re even voting for, thus making it impossible for the majority to rule in favor of watching the game. Despite this, Mac convinces Chief to vote in favor of watching the game, swaying the vote to a majority. After bringing this to Ratched’s attention, she states that the voting period had closed. “It was 10-9!” Mac, incensed, repeats over and over again. The lack of institutional justice here, and throughout the film, drives Mac, who is, at first, feigning his insanity, to slowly lose his mind for real.
Though Mac is no longer around by the film’s end, there’s hope that he has left things a little better than he found them. Perhaps not dissimilar from Forman in his native Czechoslovakia.
Jackson Bragman ‘27 is a journalism and cinema double major from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.