The director Ruben Östlund calls a “beautiful filmmaker”
Known for his take on black comedy and satirical cinema, Swedish director Ruben Östlund has emerged as one of the 21st century’s greatest European auteurs. Even with the comic elements of Östlund’s films, there is a burgeoning seriousness, too, a critique of certain facets of our contemporary society.
Well admired at the Cannes Film Festival with two Palme d’Ors to his name for 2017’s The Square and 2022’s Triangle of Sadness, the quality of Östlund’s work reaches far and wide. His other movies, like Force Majeure and Play, are some of the best pieces of cinema to have come out of Sweden in recent years.
With success great success throughout his career, Östlund has quickly become one of the most influential European filmmakers of his generation. However, he’s not without his own personal heroes, and in a feature with A-Frame, he once expressed his deep admiration for the legendary director Miloš Forman.
“You can feel Miloš Forman’s humanism through everything that he’s making,” Östlund began, noting his admiration for Forman’s 1975 drama One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. “I admire the way that he portrayed the characters in this film with such a warm heart.”
“If you look at the action taking place in the film, I mean, Jack Nicholson’s character is bringing prostitutes to this place, and it would be questioned in so many ways in our times, but it deals with us human beings in a very generous, forgiving, and loving way, even with the errors and the mistakes that we make,” the director added. “He manages to make this ensemble of people in this hospital so rich and so alive.”
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a genuinely remarkable work of cinema. Based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Ken Kesey, Jack Nicholson plays Randle McMurphy. He delivers an incredible performance as a new patient at a mental institution after feigning madness so he can avoid prison for the rape of a 15-year-old girl.
The maverick McMurphy rouses up his fellow patients by showing them how to live in spite of the austere professional approach of the institution’s head nurse, Mildred Ratched, played by Louise Fletcher. Nicholson’s performance is easily one of his best, and it set him on the path to stardom.
“It’s just a fantastic experience to be on that journey in that film,” Östlund continued. “You can also tell that Miloš Forman comes from an ex-Communistic dictatorship because his films are so much about the individual that breaks out and becomes free. In the end, the Indian throws the sink through the window and runs out free in nature.”
Signing off on his admiration for the legendary director, Östlund concluded, “All of Miloš Forman’s films are basically about someone that is behaving in an unexpected way but is free to do it. They don’t let themselves be pushed down by expectations about the state, conventions, and so on. He’s a beautiful filmmaker.”
Check out the trailer for Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest below.
