I have conflated this aspect of both these movies before, I think I first watched both about the same time and the obsession with the material world in each is kind of striking to me, combined with the way the movies concluded that left the viewer (in my case anyway) wondering what was real and what was only in the MC's heads.

Haha entirely probable! Oops

Understood, I think I started to read the book an eon ago but my recollection is that the endless detailed analysis of pop music made it unreadable for me, I simply could not deal with pages of discussion about a Huey Lewis and the News tune. I think one of the things about the movie that struck me was the way scenes of his home were annotated like an IKEA catalog.

I haven't read the book but the movie I think helped illustrate the MC's fixation on popular materialism - the business cards and furnishings, the music....every thing in this guy's world is a prop of some sort that is a part of his fantasy.

It has been ages since I read the book or watched the movie, however my understanding has always been that McMurphy conned his way into a mental institution to avoid what he imagined was the harsher reality of serving a term in prison.

I think it is the juxtaposition of a 'sane' person held in a psychiatric ward that gives the audience a lens through which to view the conditions of the institution and possibly how McMurphy was caught up in his struggle against the system.