} about one that flew over the cuckoo's nest

watched One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest today. :D my dad has taken dvd piracy to a whole new level by removing the need of dvds altogether. he bought a player that plays straight from a hard drive to the TV, so all we have to do is transfer torrented files to the player! :0 har har har.

anyway, the movie. it really lives up to its reputation as one of the greatest movies of all time, the kind that impresses not just because of special effects (*cough*Avatar*cough*) but rather the depth of the acting, the shots, and of course the story... there was a scene where it was just a headshot of jack nicholson for 30 seconds or more and he wasn't doing anything, just idling, but it was still captivating because the whole time i was wondering what he was thinking and what he was going to do next.

i have a lot of mixed feelings about the story, but thats natural because i hae a lot of mixed feelings about mental illness and mental treatment. in the middle of the movie i thought, 'ok these people aren't really crazy, they're just like everyone' but in the end i thought, 'ok maybe they really ARE crazy'. but AFTERWARDS i realised that there are just certain things that will make ANYONE crazy, you know? there was one scene where a cigarette butt burned through a patient's pants, and he started screaming and jumping around in pain, and the nurses all thought he had lost control and carted him off straight away. that was painful to watch.

on the whole i dont think i believe in mental 'diseases'.. i dont want to believe that any mental or emotional instability is caused by genetics, or something wrong in our brain's nerves... that makes it seem so inevitable, but i dont think thats the case. but i cant write off mental treatments entirely either.. like therapy - maybe people just need someone to talk to but not everyone has someone that they can trust or that they are comfortable to talk with in their everyday lives. and maybe some people's conditions are serious enough to justify taking a pill.

but i think - and probably an important message in the movie too - that there are definitely other things, that help. like having someone treat you like a normal person, or playing basketball. catch a fish. live a little. we all know how easy it is to lose ourselves when we're up inside our own heads all the time.

2010-10-16, 10:45 p.m..
before } after