One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Two-Disc Special Edition)
by Milos Forman
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DVD details
Actor: Christopher Lloyd, Danny DeVito, Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Michael BerrymanDirector: Milos Forman
Brand: NICHOLSON/DOURIF/FLETCHER/SAMPSON
Producer: Martin Fink
Producer: Michael Douglas
Producer: Saul Zaentz
Writer: Bo Goldman
Writer: Dale Wasserman
Writer: Ken Kesey
Writer: Lawrence Hauben
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 133 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-09-24
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Reviews of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Two-Disc Special Edition)
DVD Review: One of many good choices
Summary: 4 Stars
It's inevitable that a universally lauded motion picture - the crown jewel of the new Hollywood period and perhaps the most famous of all truly independent American productions - would be committed to numerous, increasingly lavish DVD and Blu-Ray editions. What's incredible is that every one of them is still in print!
For those truly obsessed fans out there, the Blu-ray and DVD Collector's Editions are the way to go: loaded with silly goodies and the oft-tedious documentary, "Completely Cuckoo" (which has been uploaded and removed from YouTube at least twice), it's the best available option for those who don't know that they're crossing a line from admiring aesthete to slobbering fanboy.
Videophiles who demand an HD experience without all that consumerist excess will also be very well-served by the standard Blu-ray, the content of which is equivalent to this product's SD version.
Finally, for those of us who are too cheap or lazy (in the instance of this reviewer, both) to obtain a Blu-ray player, one can opt for the spare 1997 DVD or this handsome two-disc set. The former suffices for a casual viewing, but if you want to own a very good "Cuckoo's Nest" at a tolerable expense, this is your best bet.
It looks as good as it's ever going to in standard definition, a considerably better transfer than that of the '97 disc. Artifacts are all too visible via an HD screen or projection, but negligible at a healthy distance. What's really terrific is the sound of it, a perfectly crisp 5.1 Dolby mix far superior to its predecessor's muddled 2.0 stereo track, which was scarcely better than that of the old Republic Pictures VHS tape. Of the two mono dubbed dialogue tracks from the earlier edition, the Spanish one is not included here and the French option was cleaned up as a Dolby 2.0 track; the latter was performed well and is easy on the ears, despite still being a bit boggy in the lower registers. It's also important that this disc's picture is anamorphic, as its yellow, verbatim English, Spanish and French subtitles appear within the boundaries of its aspect ratio. Feel free to stretch the picture across a 16x9 screen, because it was designed to cover every centimeter while ensuring that subs can be read.
To be honest, I was hoping that the commentary track spoken by Milos Forman, Michael Douglas and Saul Zaentz would be engaging from the start, but the first twenty minutes of it drags. Information about the film's financing and location scouting isn't of much interest, and most viewers are likely to be distracted by the on-screen activity. When the track's discussion shifts to the film's casting and production in the Oregon State Hospital, the director and producers have plenty of entertaining anecdotes to tell. As usual, Forman and Douglas tend to contradict one another regarding minor details; it's up to the listener to decide which of them is more honest or has a better memory. If you're expecting specific scene-by-scene recollections from any of the three, they're few and far between. More importantly, as the speakers were recorded separately, this track lacks the congenial warmth and cohesion of a group recording.
The second disc is mostly superfluous. Its featurette documentary, "The Making of 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,'" is merely a truncated version of "Completely Cuckoo," cut down to little more than half its length. Much of the interview footage with Forman, Douglas, Zaentz, Dean Brooks, Louise Fletcher, Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd, Vincent Schiavelli and screenwriter Bo Goldman is interesting enough, but this shorter slog is still dull, and veers too often into that uncomfortably self-reverential zone inhabited by a few of the interviewees. Even worse, over half of what's said was reiterated in the commentary track, some of it so seemingly identical that I can't help but wonder if it's the same audio!
Of all the special features, the deleted scenes are the best - untreated bits of introduction and exposition that won't surprise anyone who's read Kesey's phenomenal novel, and which were more likely to have ruined a couple of crucial surprises than instill foreshadowing had they been included in the final cut.
Included in every edition, the theatrical trailer is a sloppy mess: an artless collage of notable scenes, sans context.
In spite of the complaints that I've lodged against much of this set's supplementary content, it really is the one to own for any budget-strapped admirer of this great picture. Its tri-fold presentation features an accessible scene index and immediately recognizable screen stills in gorgeous full color, most notable among them a wide shot of Chief Bromden's fountain-haul catharsis behind the transparent disc trays. Still fresh in an age when American individualism and liberty are falling away, "Cuckoo's Nest" is one of those films that's destined to last forever. Its quality is indisputable and its themes are ageless.
On the other hand, if you're only interested in the story, forget about all these discs and read Kesey's book. Not only is it an indispensable moral story that'll be relevant for as long as modernity persists, but it contains some of the finest idiomatic American prose you'll ever read in a popular novel.
Description of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Two-Disc Special Edition)
A rebellious patient battles Nurse Ratched (Fletcher) and the mental institution he has been sent to.No Track Information Available
Media Type: DVD
Artist: NICHOLSON/DOURIF/FLETCHER/SAMPSON
Title: ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST
Street Release Date: 02/01/2005
Genre: DRAMA
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