Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), I found several similarities. Both films are about patients
in a mental institution but tell completely different stories. Cuckoo’s Nest
is about a non-conformist, not mentally ill patient, R.P. McMurphy, who is
trying to avoid going to jail by pretending to be mentally ill. While there he
challenges the head nurse and tries to cure the other patients by showing
them how to live. Shutter Island is about a U.S. Marshall, Teddy Daniels, who
takes a case at the mental hospital on Shutter Island where a patient has
escaped. He takes the case because he believes his wife murderer is being
kept on the island as well. While investigating Daniels tries to discover if
the staff is performing illegal experiments on the patients, but he begins to
question his own sanity along the way. In both movies the main characters
start off being different from the patients but slowly become one, and by
the end of the film they both end up being lobotomized.
Costumes in both movies represent the character’s descent into
madness. Both McMurphy and Daniels come into the hospitals wearing their
street clothes. In Shutter Island, a storm causes Daniels to have to change
clothes, the only other available clothes being the required uniform for
the patients. He remains in this costume for the rest of the film. Similarly, in
Cuckoo’s Nest, McMurphy slowly starts losing pieces of his own clothing until
he is lobotomized and all of his personality is wiped away, he is left in the all
white costume. This costume change works backwards for Chief, another
character in Cuckoo’s Nest, by the time of his escape Chief is fully dressed
in his street clothes while McMurphy is in the required uniform.
Both films use low angle shots to show who is in control or has the power. In a
scene from Cuckoo’s Nest, McMurphy is shown in a swimming pool looking
up at one of the orderlies. The low angle shot of the orderly from McMurphy’s
point of view and the corresponding high angle shot of McMurphy from the
orderly’s point of view shows that McMurphy is powerless to control his own
life. In Shutter Island a low angle shot is used when Daniels and his partner
arrive on the island are speaking with the head police officer. The angle
suggests that all of these men are powerful in their own way. At this point
in the film the audience doesn’t know this, but the camera is telling us that
Daniels’ partner is powerful because he is really Daniels’ doctor, the camera
is also telling us that the police officer is more powerful than Daniels’ because
he isn’t really a U.S. Marshall, and lastly the camera is saying that despite all
of this Daniel’s thinks he has power to make his own decisions.
Resisting medication is a popular theme in movies of this same nature, such
as, Girl, Interrupted, and Silver Linings Playbook. The subject is also present
in Shutter Island and Cuckoo’s Nest. Usually the character not taking their
medication is doing so because they think the drugs worsen their condition,
or think that the doctors are trying to make them easier to control, not fix their
condition. In Cuckoo’s Nest, McMurphy is given a cup of pills to take fairly
soon after his arrival. McMurphy is not actually mentally ill, and he knows that
they have not yet tested him for mental illness. Naturally he questions what
the drugs are for and pretends to take them without actually swallowing.
The situation for Daniels in Shutter Island is a little more complicated. Since
he refuses to admit that he is mentally insane and thinks he is a U.S. Marshall,
the staff sneaks his medicine into his cigarettes while he plays out his fantasy.
They keep him stable, but he realizes that something is up so he quits smoking.
Once off the medicine he begins having more serious mental episodes and
hallucinations. He believes this is because of the medicine they were giving
him when in fact it’s because he is off of his medicine.
I found it interesting how much these films had in common. I realized
that most films dealing with the topic of mental illness and asylums have
most of these things in common. They are staples in the genre, just like how
the virgin never gets murdered in slasher films, or the bad guys always wear
black in westerns. Most movies prefer to stick with the old horror stories of
psychiatric practice rather than focus on the modern treatments. However,
films that do focus on patients being treated with modern medicine still shed
a bad light on the profession. The recent film, Silver Linings Playbook, has the
main character refuse to take his medication in preference to medicate
himself through dancing, and it works. He turns his life around and falls in
love. The movie is making a point that, people with mental illness shouldn’t
just let a doctor put them on a bunch of medication but try to find peace
through enriching their lives themselves. I think that because of its history
and the mystery surrounding it, the psychiatric profession will never be seen
as a positive aspect in film.
(This is one of my favorite screen caps)