Quintessential Jack

by Scott Edwards

  The slightest smile welcomes the pillow that releases him when the Chief smothers him, an act of love that gives Randall more than the system ever did. That escape precedes the Chief’s great escape, finishing what McMurphy could only aspire about, as the giant man lifts the huge porcelain bathroom fixture and tosses it through the chained windows. Chief becomes one Native American who frees himself, an achievement triumphantly celebrated by Christopher Lloyd’s ecstatic yelping salute.

  Humanity makes R.P. McMurphy’s story a tragedy. When that man loses his humanity, he must be released from the very society that held him down, ironically enough by an Indian—himself a victim of that society.

  Mews Small looked into the heart of Chief, understanding that keeping Mac alive after they destroyed his brain was “torturing the soul.” Chief’s act of release was the right thing to do for his friend, in that “sometimes, someone fulfills a request even though you can’t speak the request. The soul speaks it or the other person understands it.”30

  * * *

  Twenty-eight years later, Nicholson again addresses the subject of mental health treatment, this time with a much lighter touch and from the perspective of the practitioner rather than the patient.

  Dr. Buddy Rydell is as far from Nurse Ratched as Anger Management is from Cuckoo’s Nest. And nobody’s as far away from McMurphy as Adam Sandler is as Dave Buznik.

  How anyone can be as angry as Buznik when in a relationship with Marisa Tomei is a suspension of disbelief that’s a good first sign that this movie isn’t going to be a serious treatise on the subject of personality disorders.

  Dr. Rydell has an anger group with misfits such as Luis Guzmán and the deliciously over-the-top John Turturro. He also appears to have issues of his own. Hilarity ensues, at least as far as the moviemakers’ theory holds.

  Though not a fan of the flick, psychmovies professor Dr. Brooke Cannon agrees that much of the character conflict between the leads arises because of the irony that Dr. Rydell has the condition that he treats. “Yes, I believe that the humor in the movie arises from the fact that Nicholson also has anger management issues. This would be diagnosed as an ‘Impulse Control Disorder.’”31

  Dr. Rydell goes beyond a typical doctor-patient relationship with Buznik, moving in with him and going on a road trip reminiscent of that in As Good as It Gets, putting a good deal of the comedic situations into Odd Couple territory. Sandler isn’t as annoying as usual, while Nicholson deftly swings from crafty to crazy and psychobabbling to soft-hearted. It’s an enlarged supporting role, with Nicholson exaggerating the doctor’s non-traditional method of immersive home therapy to great effect. Dr. Cannon observes that Rydell’s “behavior and methods would be considered unethical, particularly when the client did not provide informed consent to engage in the different activities.”32

  * * *

  Warren Schmidt, in the previous year’s About Schmidt, has no connection to his wife, in some ways similar to Bobby’s occasional distance from girlfriend Rayette in Five Easy Pieces. For this reason, as well as the other empty aspects of his life, when Warren returns from his nothing job he’s left with less than nothing.

  The death of his wife then seems to trigger a type of freedom that eventually leads to an exploration and ultimately to a newfound ability to experience full emotion. Dr. Cannon cautions that if that interpretation is based on the dictionary definition of “freedom” as “being without necessity or any constraints over choice or action,” then Schmidt is technically free. But he’s more like “an untethered balloon.”33

  She explains that this is a man with no direction, having “never really had to make decisions regarding his life” as the company man and dutiful husband. “Now, without his wife, he is taking stock of his life and finding it empty.” She contextualizes Schmidt by placing him in the last position in Eric Erickson’s stages of Psychological Development known as “Integrity vs. Despair.”34

  He asks if he has made a difference with his life. He does not like the answer. What’s worse is that his negative assessment is accurate. Dr. Cannon comments, “There is some great dialogue in the movie that perfectly captures this life review.”35

  Dealing with this unfavorable internal conflict, Warren Schmidt strives to make his life “about” something. He starts by trying to make a difference in his daughter’s life, as if her snotty and ungrateful attitude—not to mention her questionable choice in husband—deserves anything more than dismissal. “His adventures along the way highlighted his ‘untethered’ state,” continues Dr. Cannon, “as he careened from one situation to the next.”36

  He returns home. He returns to nothingness, realizing that he still has not influenced the lives of others, most notably his own daughter and son-in-law. That’s why sending some money to African foster child Ndugu mattered, even if a manufactured connection or making a difference made through marketing. Warren Schmidt gets appreciation, the type that’s mere recognition as a living being, an acknowledgment from a stranger (if an actual Ndugu exists) that he never felt from his own so-called loved ones.

  Dr. Cannon says of Schmidt’s life culmination, “The most powerful scene in the movie is when he reads the letter [from Ndugu] and realizes that his life matters, that he has made a difference.” She also points out that the Japanese movie Ikiru has a similar story, one that focuses on a bureaucrat who discovers that he has cancer, and also realizes that his life has made no difference.37 Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 existentialist masterpiece follows a man who finds the meaning of life only when dying, and who dedicates himself passionately to building a playground for neighborhood children.

  Kurosawa’s character Watanabe finds solace as he sits on a swing, in the snow in the park, the same not-too-late meaningfulness that causes Schmidt to weep in gladness about the boy he may have saved.

  The word “ikiru” means … to live.

  * * *

  In Wolf, Will Randall turns any depression he experiences about losing his job into a desire for revenge against those who did him in (Christopher Plummer as Raymond Alden, the publishing house’s owner, and James Spader as the protégé who plotted to replace him). Randall’s werewolf transformation could in part have a less than supernatural explanation, as suppression that had built up and was suddenly and violently released.

  The former chief editor’s vengeance, based on his frustration with the duplicity of Alden, ultimately escapes through his alter ego and by his freed libido (courtesy of Alden’s daughter, played by Michelle Pfeiffer). The question raised by this Mike Nichols film is whether such an assumed identity can be used as an excuse for extreme behavior that is not under the control of the person. After all, the wolf is not human, taking Randall’s change beyond the transformation of good human Dr. Jekyll to the bad human Mr. Hyde.

  * * *

  Another depressive character is David Staebler, the radio host in The King of Marvin Gardens. Based on samples from his show and what we glimpse of his personality, this is a guy who in the vernacular would be termed “a downer.” Even Staebler refers to his life as a “tragedy that isn’t exactly Top 40,” while the closest he can get to a punchline is a story about his grandfather choking on fish.

  Monkee Peter Tork has criticized director Bob Rafelson for trapping his characters in a black box (a reference to the literal and figurative black box prominently figuring in the Nicholson-Rafelson-penned Head).38 Here, the radio studio staging and dark lighting suggest this sense of place, just as it represents the embodiment of David’s life.

  When David’s brother Jason contacts him out of the blue to basically force him to take part in a questionable business venture in dormant Atlantic City, David goes along reluctantly and flaccidly. When the situation gets more bizarre, David emerges from his downbeat and introverted non-personality, and it’s no coincidence that this occurs when David takes on assumed personalities. He’s a boardwalk huckster, a Miss America pageant master of ceremonies, a business hustler to Japanese investors. He’s ev
erything but David, and often less than a partner or a brother.

  When insane violence takes Jason, David retreats back to his Philadelphia prison of an apartment and shrivels back to his nothing self, only a weeping and pathetic voice on the radio.

  Significantly, the opening and closing radio monologues are shot to give the appearance of someone opening up about his thoughts to a psychiatrist. Unfortunately, no such professional is actually present, and David’s self-therapy does nothing to help his condition.

  * * *

  In The Shining, Jack Torrance’s job also gets him down, but not as much as does his family and his fatal bout of writer’s block. Nicholson attributed his character’s state to what he brought to the Overlook, rather than what he found there, saying that “the most volatile element in our culture is the pressure inside the family unit.”39 The Shining is considered a descent into madness, yet there are signs of the character’s mental imbalance from the beginning of the film, such as his odd countenance on the drive to the hotel and his strange reaction to the mention of cannibalism and the Donner Party. In fact, his backstory shows more serious signs, most notably having broken his son’s arm while drunk.

  Diane Johnson, who co-wrote the script with director Stanley Kubrick, admitted, “Nicholson was very much crazier from the outset of his performance than in the book, and very much crazier than Kubrick envisioned, I think.”40

  Dr. Cannon agrees that Torrance was already suffering from undiagnosed mental illness prior to going to the Overlook, with “a predisposition to schizophrenia, but it required significant environmental stress to trigger the disease. Once triggered, though, it follows its course. This is consistent with the ‘diathesis-stress model’ of schizophrenia (diathesis meaning genetic predisposition).”41

  In a 1980 interview with Michel Ciment, Kubrick described his intention to “strike an extraordinary balance between the psychological and the supernatural in such a way as to lead you to think that the supernatural would eventually be explained by the psychological: ‘Jack must be imagining these things because he’s crazy.’”42

  Torrance withdraws into his “writing” and into an isolated condition, not solely because of the remote, snowbound condition of the hotel, but also a self-imposed distancing from his family. The more he stays away from them, the more he (seemingly) hallucinates, and the stranger his disassociated state becomes. Dr. Cannon explains, “People with depression or anxiety (maybe what might happen in writer’s block) can develop psychosis,” in response to environmental stress or sensory deprivation.

  As a mental health professional who has put a good deal of effort into surfacing and refuting falsehoods about psychological conditions depicted in films, Dr. Cannon also emphasizes that The Shining “once again perpetuates the myth that people with mental illness are more dangerous than others,” pointing out that statistics show otherwise. However, “whenever someone commits a heinous crime and happens to also be mentally ‘ill,’ such as the Unabomber, that makes news.”43

  * * *

  Nicholson has portrayed other men whose substance abuse contributes to social dysfunction, seriously in Carnal Knowledge and to more comic effect in Terms of Endearment and Easy Rider. He becomes a dangerous drunk in Studs Lonigan (committing rape at a wild party) and most dramatically in 1987’s Ironweed and 2001’s The Pledge.

  Ironweed is based on William Kennedy’s novel of the same name. Nicholson plays Francis Phelan, whose life and baseball career ended when he dropped his infant to his death while intoxicated (shades of breaking son Danny’s arm while drunk in The Shining). He lives a Skid Row existence and has dropped out of his family’s life (a route Jack Torrance was traveling prior to his total break with reality and the resulting murderous attacks).

  This man clearly suffers due to the accidental death of his baby. Francis reacts to this traumatic event by shutting himself off from society and building his life around abusing the substance that led to the tragedy in the first place. Phelan also sees “ghosts” from his past, something that increasingly interferes with his life, such as it is.

  Jerry Black also gets to the point where he hallucinates and relives his final, failed case about a murdered child. In Sean Penn’s The Pledge, Black’s failure to keep his pledge to parents of the victim, along with his guilt about betraying his lover (Robin Wright Penn) by using her young daughter as bait for the suspected killer, pushes him into a muttering, bitter world of constantly recreating each detail.

  In Sean Penn’s The Pledge (2001), Jerry Black’s (Nicholson) failure to keep his promise to parents (Michael O’Keefe and Patricia Clarkson, lower left) of a murdered child, coupled with his guilt about betraying his lover when he uses her daughter as bait, pushes him over the edge of reality and into a world of hallucinations.

  The retired detective becomes so obsessed with the case that he puts another child in danger—one he truly loves—no longer having the discernment to see that what he is doing is wrong and dangerous. The beginning and the end of the film bookend harrowing studies of a drunken and broken man, a man who cracks under the pressure that he himself has built up.

  * * *

  In Tim Burton’s Batman, Nicholson carries a mystique and creates a persona that makes the film. When I asked Dr. Cannon if a trauma such as the disfiguring and life-changing injuries suffered by Jack Napier would cause someone to first desert society and then attack it, as some sort of revenge based on a feeling of victimization that “life isn’t fair,” she asserted that it would not. Otherwise, “we’d have a society overrun with homicidal maniacs.” She does draw attention to “correlations between childhood trauma and the development of Antisocial Personality Disorder (sociopathy, psychopathy, etc.)” as perhaps applicable to the character.

  The psychmovies professor also noted that depicting a villain as disfigured in some way (“pirates with eye patches and peg legs and hooks for hands, the Phantom of the Opera with a disfigured face, etc.”) is a standard movie convention. “The disfigurement in the Joker could be used as an excuse to follow his otherwise natural tendencies. There is a genetic component to criminality and psychopathy.” She tantalizingly adds, “If the story was true that his father caused his injuries, then that suggests a genetic contribution as well.”44

  * * *

  Two Nicholson characters who are most fearsome because of their nonchalance about killing, are Billy Spear in Monte Hellman’s The Shooting (1966) and Frank Costello in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed (2006). Three decades separate these performances—but no logic, no rational thought, no principle of humanity or earthly emotion can explain the abject disregard and viciousness that joins them.

  Spear is a hired killer riding with a nameless Millie Perkins character. Costello is a gangster and murderer based on Whitey Bulger. While Spear helps Perkins on her relentless ride for revenge, Costello’s killings are entirely his own choice and not always for business.

  Billy likes to torture others psychologically and physically. His words add a sick sting to his acts. He threatens, “I’m gonna blow your face off.” He promises, “Your brain’s gonna fry out here, you know that?” He says “Leave him” about abandoning someone in the desert with no horse and no provisions. Billy is sadism personified.

  Costello loses his temper easily, screaming at a group of priests to “enjoy your clams, cocksuckers” when one dares direct a comment that “pride comes before the fall” in Frank’s direction. He’s coked out and on the edge. He, too, takes pleasure in unnerving and intimidating, shaking up Leonardo DiCaprio’s character by acting out a story about a rat who got what he deserved. He handles body parts like toys and stands bemused after a point-blank shooting victim “fell funny.” Frank makes the mob look bad.

  Millie Perkins considered Billy Spear a “gun for hire who didn’t give a damn about anybody,” while her character “knew he was a bad man, but I didn’t care.”45 Frank Costello seems to enjoy the violence and depersonalized it to the extreme point far beyond the nee
d even required of a murderous criminal. This may well be a manifestation of an individual’s defense mechanism at work, similar to the way a soldier must do so in war.

  Dr. Cannon illuminates non-professionals about this, revealing that both physiological and brain functioning differences exist for psychopaths. Their body’s resting state, such as heart rate and blood pressure, is much lower than normal subjects, allowing them to “stay cool and calm in situations or when engaging in deviant behaviors, because the activities simply bring their psychological state up to the level of normals at rest.”46

  David Boeri, who has reported on the James “Whitey” Bulger case for 28 years in Boston, explained that the real man was consistent with this assessment. “The reports were that he kills and then he likes to take a nap, that there was some sort of release when he kills people.”47

  Method Actor that he is, it’s unlikely that Nicholson went so far as hearing and listening to voices to prepare for a role, unless there were voices telling him to take the points on Batman to forever reap the formidable benefit from his percentage of profits. The Joker himself didn’t need voices to push him toward vengeance, and Dr. Buddy Rydell was enough of a maverick that he didn’t need any encouragement either.

  David Staebler tried to be a king of Marvin Gardens, a king of nothing. His own voice kept reminding him of regret and sadness and loneliness and failure. Psychologically sourced interior voices would have been superfluous and would not have done as good a job in keeping David down.

  R.P. McMurphy wasn’t even mentally ill. Warren Schmidt was left adrift. And Melvin Udall had a condition that controlled him, but didn’t require any voices in order to do so. Psychotic killers in The Shooting and The Departed may have given in to the evil voice, no doubt having slain the good voice long ago, long enough ago to not recognize the sound of that voice should it ever return.