A SHOT OF JACK

For years I was certain I knew what the single greatest scene in the entire work of actor Jack Nicholson's career had to be and I was one hundred per cent resolute about it. One hundred per cent.

The scene between the social drifter Bobby Dupea (Jack Nicholson) and his elderly, wheelchair bound father Nicholas Dupea (William Challee) in Bob Rafelson's 'Five Easy Pieces' (1970) demonstrated a depth and range of emotional intelligence in Nicholson's performance that surpassed most screen acting one generally finds on film. This was a moment of such rare and naked vulnerability from the New Jersey born actor and his mute counterpart that it almost brought you directly into the scene. It was as if you were standing outside in that same field with the characters, experiencing the fragile moment in real time where the confessional atmosphere felt as intimate as cinema gets when at its very best.

However, re-watching Milos Forman's 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' (1975) yesterday I was struck by a moment that now seems to me even greater in many ways to the father/son scene of 'Five Easy Pieces' no matter how reductive such comparisons like this can be for some people.

Just after the rebellious criminal, Randle Patrick McMurphy has successfully carried out a secret party for himself and his fellow patients in the Oregon-based mental institution where the story is set, he has a rare opportunity to escape in the early dawn with his two prostitute friends, Sandra and Candy, and finally make a break from his incarceration.

But he doesn't seize the opportunity and instead appears to mine a sequence of internal reflections inside his mind. It is up to us, the viewer, to interpret what the character is thinking about here, according to how we believe we understand McMurphy from what we've observed so far up to this quietly accelerating denouement of the story.

For me, at this stage of the film, I think McMurphy has begun to feel a weight of responsibility for his fellow patients and has become a sort of spiritual shepherd for his flock, one might even say Christ-like. At the same time, it seems as if he's almost transcended the very concept of freedom itself and resigned himself to the futility of his existence or perhaps become ambivalent about pursuing the notion of liberty. Is this an indication that he has finally become fully institutionalised? Possibly. Or is it that he knows deep down that reality itself is a prison to which we're all held hostage and that he doesn't entirely trust himself in the outside world anyway where he would no doubt be returned to the same penal and mental institutions ad infinitum.

And then, in a sublime off-screen detail, we hear the literal and symbolic sound of a train whistle in the distance which seems to prompt a wry smile for McMurphy. It's almost as if he knows he's going nowhere and that the universe is mocking him with the siren song of freedom synonymous with many folk and blues songs with their often frequent references to passing trains.

All of these themes and ideas are non-verbal in this scene and only made remotely visible by the genius of Nicholson's subtle skills as a master screen actor.

In his face we see the dilemma of the existential trap for McMurphy and for all of humanity.