Five Easy Pieces [DVD]

Robert Dupea (Jack Nicholson) works with his friend Elton as an oilrigger in California, and spends his free time bowling and drinking beer. When his witless girlfriend Rayette (Karen Black) announces that she is pregnant, Robert meets up with his concert pianist sister (Lois Smith), who tells him that their father does not have long to live. Rayette sees Robert in a new light when he reveals that he, too, is a classical pianist, and accompanies him when he decides to return to his family home in Washington. However, things don’t go particularly smoothly once in Washington when Robert falls for another woman (Susan Anspach), who is the complete opposite of Rayette.
This subtle, existential character study of an emotionally distant outcast (Nicholson) forced to confront his past failures remains an intimate cornerstone of American cinema of the 1970s. Written and directed with remarkable restraint by Bob Rafelson, the film is the result of a short-lived partnership between the filmmaker and Nicholson–the first was the zany formalist exercise, Head, while the equally impressive King of Marvin Gardens followed Five Easy Pieces. Quiet and full of long, controlled takes, this film draws its strength from the acutely detailed, non-judgemental observations of its complex protagonist, Robert Dupea–an extremely crass and frustrated oil worker and failed child pianist hiding from his past in Texas. Dupea spends his life drinking beer and sleeping with (and cheating on) his annoying but adoring Tammy Wynette-wannabe girlfriend, but when he learns that his father is dying in Washington State, he leaves. After the film transforms into a spirited road movie, and arrives at the eccentric upper-class Dupea family mansion, it becomes apparent that leaving is what Dupea does best–from his problems, fears and those who love him. Nicholson gives a difficult yet masterful performance in an unlikeable role, one that’s full of ambiguity and requires violent shifts in acting style. Several sequences–such as his stopping traffic to play piano, or his famous verbal duels with a cranky waitress over a chicken-salad sandwich–are Nicholson landmarks. Yet, it’s the quieter moments, when Dupea tries miserably to communicate and reconcile with his dying father, where the actor shows his real talent–and by extension, shows us the wounded little boy that lurks in the shell of the man Dupea has become. –Dave McCoy, store