One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Although the film version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a good movie, it ultimately fails to communicate the themes portrayed in the book by Ken Kesey. Kesey's novel is about the individual versus society, and how society controls people forces people to turn out as clones in a way. In the book, there is really nothing wrong with a majority of the patients; they are not completely insane. The reason that they are locked away from society is because they are different than others. They aren't just another replicate of every other person in society who rides the subway to work and comes home to their perfect little family and house with a white picket fence. Society doesn't know how to react to people who are different, so they lock them away. However, even in the ward the patients are strictly controlled. The Big Nurse has complete power over the patients before McMurphy arrives. She scares them into behaving the way she wants them to. But once McMurphy comes to the ward, he shows the patients that they don't have to stand for that, and she doesn't have the power to control them unless they give it to her. He completely changes the patients' outlook on things, even though he has to pay for it in the end. In the novel, once McMurphy gets a lobotomy most of the patients leave. This is important because it shows that even though McMurphy is now a vegetable, he succeeded in giving the patients the "guts" they needed to leave the ward.
The film version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest does not communicate these same messages. The patients in the movie all are actually crazy. A lot of them would not be able to get along in society even if they had the guts- unlike in the book. They sort of need to have control in their lives, because they are too crazy not to. This ruins the whole idea of overcoming the control and power of "the conbine". We also loose Chief's narration in the film, which dramatically changes the way we see the story. Ontop of that, at the end of the movie none of the patients leave the ward, except for Chief. Most of the patients are sort of right back where they began.