Top Ten List--One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 1975, Written by Bo Goldman and Lawrence Hauben; Based on the book by Ken Kesey; Directed by Milos Forman

The over-arching metaphor of the movie may be obvious, but it doesn't make it any less brilliant. The mental hospital that Jack Nicholson's Randle McMurphy finds himself in is a perfect microcosm of society. Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) is the authority figure trying to bring conformity and rule-bound behavior at any cost, and McMurphy is the one trying to inspire those around him to question authority and revel in their individuality and ability to care for each other. At first, both viewpoint have their validity, but extending the metaphor, Ratched's position of power and authority slowly corrupts her and she bends the rules and then breaks them in order to remain in control. The down, yet hopeful ending, is the best part of the movie, as it gives the movie-level metaphor the ring of truth, as McMurphy and the inmates fail overall to overthrow authority, yet the struggle inspires The Chief to break free and make a go at living life. The story is filled with sadness, humor, anger, rebellion, little victories, and big defeats. In the end, there are very few movie metaphors that are so complete, so successful, so insightful, and so completely simple.

Next Top Ten or So

Okay, this is starting to get a bit drawn out. I will try to get these complete, so we can all move on to more interesting things.

L’Avventura, 1960, Written by Michelangelo Antonioni, Elio Bartolini and Tonino Guerra; Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni.

In my mind, L'Avventura is the kind of film that everyone dreams of making when they're young and want to go to film school (of course, Pulp Fiction is probably a little more popular choice). What I mean, is that when you're young and dreaming of making the best movie ever made, you imagine a film in which every single thing is meaningful--the angles, compositions, mise-en-scene, etc. But you com to realize, that most films just aren't made that carefully. But L'Avventura was made that carefully. Every camera move, every frameline, every position or movement of an actor, every placement of a background element, everything visual has meaning, has a reason to be the way it is. Now, I'm not going to pretend I know what the meaning of every choice in L'Avventura is, but the meaning is nevertheless there. Even more impressively, the meaning is not cheap symbolism (I read recently on David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson's blog that Scorsese and Michael Balhaus tried to put crosses in any form into every shot where a character is in danger into in The Departed--that's cheap symbolism to me). In fact, the meaning of the shots isn't really symbolic at all, as is excellently explained by Gene Youngblood on the Criterion Collection DVD.

In short, the film is about the mysterious disappearance of Anna, and the resulting love affair between her boyfriend Sandro and her best friend Claudia. These are all characters who seem to have lost meaning in their lives, and the varying abilities of the characters to realize this and do something about it. Of all the films on my list, this one suffers the most from an attempt to describe it, given the amazing quality of the visuals, so I'm going to quit while I'm ahead.