One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

After reading Ken Kesey's novel, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, and watching the film directed by Milos Forman, there are some concepts in the film that are lost that are from the book. For example, the book is narrated by Chief Bromden where as the film the narration is lost. You don't get to know Chief very well until the end. He is projected as an unimportant character in the film. When R.P. McMurphy shows up to the Combine in the film, he isn't as carefree and laughing as he was in the novel.The actor, Jack Nicholson, plays the McMurphy character more as serious and not as carefree. He doesn't seem as joking; taking in the scene where McMurphy saunter down the halls with his white whale boxers with a towel around him asking Big Nurse where his clothes are. (Another physical trait is that Nicholson doesn't have red hair, he isn't tall and burly with big hands as McMurphy is described in the novel.) Not only are McMurphy and Chief different, the film portrays the patients as insane, rather in the novel they are, according to McMurphy, "not the average man on the street, but not nuts". In the film, you get a better view on how mental patients are, but you can't picture these people on the street as of "normal". In fact, you wouldn't want these crazy people, just as Taber or Martini on the street causing chaos or disrupt among other people. Another scene that isn't true is that Chief doesn't go on the fishing trip with the boys, as well as the doctor. They aren't "drunk" and having a good time with Chief, it's just a bit backwards in the film. Big Nurse herself isn't as "big with big breasts". She seems nicer in the book whereas in the movie she's a bit more stern with the patients. Although the film plays multiple scenes in one, (where in some cases are hard to grasp what is going on in the duration of the movie), it doesn't have a "great"job of capturing the book itself, but towards the end of the film it stays somewhat true to the book. The only question that is left in the end though, do the other patients sign out, jump out the window and start anew with their lives in the real world, or do they stay in the Combine as insane as they, assuming, were? The film has it's ups and downs, but personally I don't believe it stuck true to Ken Kesey's novel. Ken Kesey himself declares that the film portrays melodrama and defeats the book's purpose. I can agree with Kesey; I don't think the film did a good job on capturing a great novel that deserved better in the film.