Reaction to Film

There were some minor differences in the film from the book, however, i felt I got a much better idea of what the characters were like in the film than from reading the book. I became more interested in the film than the book, and that does not happen often! Cheswick stood out much more in the film to me. His character portrayed in the film is the kind of character that drives me absolutely crazy with his questioning and complaining.
At the same time, however, the film completely left out Cheswick's death. I always get ticked off when films do not follow the book!
I can see why Ken Kesey would not be pleased with this film. First off, the film was not narrated in Chief's point of view, like the book. So many beautiful descriptions were depicted in the book that there's no way the film would be able to pick them up. One is the description of the hospital, and Big Nurse being a work of machinery. "So she really lets herself go and her painted smile twists, stretches to an open snarl, and she blows up bigger and bigger, big as a tractor, so big I can smell the machinery inside the way you smell a motor pulling too big a load"(11). Another metaphor not mentioned in the film was the fog that hides chief from the rest of the patients and Big Nurse, the fog made him invisible. The fog was a main element, and would be good to put in the film.
In the book, I understood how the title got it's name through the nursery rhyme Chief learned from his grandmother. I think that anyone who watched the movie without reading the book would probably question why the title is about a cuckoo's nest. I know I would be curious! That would have been good to mention in the movie as well.