What is the message of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?

Forman is an absolute master behind the camera—he’s proven that time and time again.
I’m curious to get your take on the core message of his earlier film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Do people actually choose to live in a "prison" by their own free will?

Man, screw Forman. 😁 😁 😁 😁
No offense, but I’m a sucker for a good intro—nothing personal.
What I mean is, Forman isn't really the point when you talk about One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; it’s all about Ken Kesey, the guy who actually wrote the book.
Ken Kesey was a Beat, more about living the life than just sitting around writing it. And the Beats? They were those folks who thought they were super deep and poetic, constantly getting squeezed by "The System." It kept encroaching on their freedom. That was the era of Allen Ginsberg, Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, and the rest. They were all obsessed with Buddhism—that whole idea that happiness is inside you, you just gotta find it.
Then Timothy Leary comes along with LSD. That stuff is heavy, right? Total taboo. It ended up messing with the Beats, who were basically the bridge to the hippies—people filling the gaps between trips with prose and poetry. Then the Vietnam War just wrecked everything.
The core takeaway from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is pretty grim: if an individual sticks too far out from the System, the System is gonna crush them. The rules are set by the machine, not the person. The System takes people who could be perfectly fine—kind of like how Jack Nicholson showed us in the movie (the Indian and his crew aren't any crazier than the "normal" ones)—and labels them insane because the System doesn't get them, or doesn't want to, so it just gets rid of them in a "clean" way.
America during the Vietnam era was its own kind of asylum, and Jack Nicholson is essentially Ken Kesey.
It’s that endless tug-of-war between the System and the individual, where the System always wins, no matter how strong the person is. Look, what I wrote here is probably pretty shallow—I've barely scratched the surface of what One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is trying to say—but if you're curious, just go read the book, dive into the Beat Generation, or check out some old interviews...
Anyway, the staff in an asylum is usually way crazier than the patients. But hey, staff is staff.
And Forman doesn't matter.
Either Forman totally missed what Kesey was aiming for, or back then, he just wasn't allowed to film what Kesey actually meant.

I think the biggest issue here is that Leb brought up the Beats but completely left out Jack Kerouac. That's the real problem. Kerouac was basically the messiah of the Beat Generation—he wasn't just chasing a high; he was out there driving across the USA. He was the real deal, staying focused and not getting bogged down by the system. The only reason Leb ignored him is because he's a homophobe.
...if anyone suggested Leb hadn't actually read On the Road, they'd just call him an uneducated bigot.
..as it stands, he's just a bigot...😬

Nah, actually—I read Dharma Bums before I ever picked up On the Road. Honestly, Dharma Bums totally blew me away, but On the Road was kind of a letdown for me. And yeah, I mentioned Ginsberg because he was gay. 😬
But hey, I personally think Paul Di Anno was a better singer for Iron Maiden, so my opinion doesn't really matter much anyway, right?

So, what did One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest teach you? You’re a total beatnik too, I can tell.

Look, honestly, I’m still not even sure if we actually rented Rocky IV that day. Maybe we did, maybe we didn't; maybe my old man just felt like watching a movie. It doesn't matter. What matters is that Rock wasn't what showed up—it was THAT movie. Or rather, the movie set in some hospital where everyone just talks, and the one where that big Indian rips out the water valve and chucks it through the window. If Rocky had been at the Blockbuster instead and I’d watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, maybe it would have told me something about America, about society, about conformity, or the repression of the individual. Maybe I could have drawn a line between Orwell's Big Brother and Ken Kesey's Big Nurse. But it wasn't. All I remember is that Indian, and only because he ripped out that water valve. Even back then, I knew it wasn't easy to rip something like that out and throw it out a window. Though, if anyone could do it, it was that massive Indian. And to me, that guy was more important than the nurse. And that Indian was mute. My old man told me that Indians aren't the only ones who are mute. He said plenty of people are mute too—they could speak if they wanted to, but they just won't. I just told him I had gym class tomorrow. And Philip told me Rocky IV would be on Netflix, so there was no point in renting it.
...
...Years later, in the distant future, I tried to wrap my head around One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by looking at all the social and political subtext, and suddenly that damn nurse started to mean something to me. I thought I was being pretty smart, until one day I read that Ken Kesey never even saw the Miloš Forman film because he lost his mind over how they messed up his Indian—since he was supposed to be the lead, but you can't tell from the screen.
...
So I went to my old man and asked if he remembered that movie we watched, "the one in the asylum," and told him that the Indian was actually the main character because he ripped out that water valve. I told him it was Ken Kesey. Then my dad started acting weird and asked me who on earth Ken Kesey was, if he was one of those Beatnik drug types, and said he'd send all of them to work at a local quarry.

Well, then I asked him about the boy, and he told me he was just some regular guy..... 😁

So, did you actually finish Ken Kesey, or what?
You’ve read that bum Jack Kerouac guy, but you haven't touched Ken Kesey yet.
Man, Kerouac... just a bunch of stuff about picking plums, driving through Mexico, drinking wine—whatever. Totally meh.
Go read Ken Kesey. 👍

..not really interested 😁
..Ken Kesey is a thief..well, an LSD thief..he basically ripped off poor Jack Kerouac by feeding him all that Dean Moriarty nonsense and drugging him just so he'd drive the van...now he wants to cruise around the USA himself, how pathetic😁

Hey man, go ahead and read that book for dustyscout53. 😁 😁

And what's up with everyone else jumping on this movie bandwagon—don't they have any actual opinions? Do they seriously think the whole point is just about how Indians are ungrateful, like, you give them a bed and food and all that, and they still just wreck the damn hotel?

...I’m punishing him by sticking his book right next to Kerouac on the shelf... and honestly, this one’s even better than Kerouac's
Let people see what happens when you steal a driver from a colleague😁
...
...And to top it off, they’re acting like they didn't do anything wrong!!!