"One Flew Over the Cickoo's Nest" Film Analysis

The opening sequence effectively sets up the isolated mood of the hospital ward through the lone car winding down a long curled road. The landscape is barren and desolate giving the viewer a sense of desperation and futility. The strange but stylized tribal Indian music accompanying the scene also adds to the sense of isolation with its seemingly improvised flute-like melody. When inside the ward, the music immediately turns into a classical vinyl record. The …

…the spirit of rebellion finally emerging. It showed that his fears and constraints have been overcome and the same can be said for all the patients. The bleak almost fully desaturated colours and stark lighting contrasts add to the effect of the ward as an allegory to a mechanical unit, the 'Combine'. It also adds to the foreboding and suppressing atmosphere of the ward, with the dark shadows that almost seem to consume the patients.