Netflix’s Ratched is an over-stylised origin… | Little White Lies

Not Movies

Netflix’s Ratched is an over-stylised ori­gin sto­ry misfire

14 Sep 2020

Words by Emma Fraser

A woman wearing a blue nurse's uniform stands over a patient lying on a hospital bed.
A woman wearing a blue nurse's uniform stands over a patient lying on a hospital bed.
Some motives are bet­ter left undi­ag­nosed, as Ryan Murphy’s glossy pre­quel series, star­ring Sarah Paul­son as the tit­u­lar nurse, shows.

Even if you haven’t seen or read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, chances are you’ve heard of Nurse Ratched. Louise Fletch­er won the Acad­e­my Award in 1976 for her por­tray­al of the ter­ri­fy­ing care­giv­er, an icon­ic per­for­mance that led to the char­ac­ter being named as the fifth great­est movie vil­lain of all time by the Amer­i­can Film Institute.

Based on Ken Kesey’s book of the same name, Mil­dred Ratched’s intro­duc­tion gives lit­tle indi­ca­tion as to how she became an author­i­tar­i­an night­mare who lacks the empa­thy asso­ci­at­ed with her pro­fes­sion. Join­ing the ori­gin sto­ry ranks, this eight-part psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller from pro­duc­er and co-cre­ator Ryan Mur­phy turns the clock back to 194716 years before the film is set – to find out just how the leg­endary antag­o­nist came to be.

Despite boast­ing an impres­sive cast – includ­ing Emmy win­ner Sarah Paul­son in the title role – Ratched goes off the rails in the first two episodes. Abrupt tonal shifts between ter­ri­fy­ing sce­nar­ios, dark com­e­dy and trou­bling treat­ments in the Lucia State Hos­pi­tal leave the nar­ra­tive unmoored from the off. The stun­ning Cal­i­forn­ian coastal vis­tas, sump­tu­ous pro­duc­tion design and beau­ti­ful cos­tumes are at odds with the hor­ri­fy­ing world depict­ed. The jux­ta­po­si­tion might be the point, but the over-styl­i­sa­tion reduces the impact of the over­ar­ch­ing emo­tion­al thread.

Look­ing dras­ti­cal­ly dif­fer­ent from the white­washed walls of the Salem State Hos­pi­tal (where One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is set), the Lucia is more like a fan­cy hotel than a med­ical facil­i­ty. The lat­ter would make more sense if pio­neer­ing psy­chi­a­trist Dr Hanover (Jon Jon Briones) wasn’t con­stant­ly fret­ting about the hospital’s pre­car­i­ous finan­cial position.

Three individuals, two men and one woman, wearing green uniforms, attending to a patient in a medical setting.

Psy­chi­atric pro­to­cols in the 1940s were unreg­u­lat­ed, which led to a rise in exper­i­men­tal inter­ven­tions such as lobot­o­mies. The lat­ter is famous­ly wield­ed as a weapon to sub­due by Nurse Ratched in the source mate­r­i­al. Sub­tle and overt ref­er­ences to the orig­i­nal por­tray­al are lit­tered through­out, includ­ing the era-appro­pri­ate hair­style the nurse will still be wear­ing in the 1960s and manip­u­la­tion tech­niques she employ­ees. True mon­sters are made, not born,” is how Mildred’s gen­e­sis is described, but maybe this show would be bet­ter with­out the famous moniker attached.

A recog­nis­able IP comes with cer­tain expec­ta­tions, and this is pre­cise­ly where Ratched falls down. If this was a sto­ry about the hor­rors com­mit­ted on patients in psy­chi­atric facil­i­ties dur­ing this peri­od it might feel less egre­gious. Instead, the motives pro­pelling Mil­dred for­ward are root­ed in a series of repressed and guilt-rid­den tropes, which are cliched at best and prob­lem­at­ic at worst. In fact, Mur­phy has pre­vi­ous­ly explored the world of mid-cen­tu­ry men­tal health treat­ments with more suc­cess in Amer­i­can Hor­ror Sto­ry: Asylum.

A reliance on split screens and tran­si­tion wipes does aid ten­sion build­ing, as does the moody orches­tral score by Mac Quayle, which also utilis­es the instant­ly famil­iar Max’ theme from Cape Fear. Clunky dia­logue can­not be saved though, even by the likes of Paul­son, Cyn­thia Nixon and Judy Davis. Addi­tion­al­ly, a sub­plot fea­tur­ing Sharon Stone and a pet mon­key reads like a reject­ed Amer­i­can Hor­ror Sto­ry idea.

You might like