Five Easy Pieces

Bob Rafelson, USA, 1970, 96 minutes

Road movies were much in vogue in the late 1960's and early 1970's and Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces is, along with Monte Hellman's stupendous Two-Lane Blacktop, the best of the bunch. Jack Nicholson plays erstwhile classical pianist Bobby Dupea. Disenchanted with his bourgeois background, he takes to the road and drifts. He finds a job as an oil-rig worker in Southern California, spending his evenings at the bowling alley. Very much his own man, he starts an uneasy relationship with a sluttish waitress (Karen Black). it is only when he hears, from his sister, of his father's stroke that he decides (reluctantly) to visit home.

This is an inspired, emotionally resonant movie. It asks us to look inside ourselves to discover our own desires. It's packed full of delightful set-pieces, including the legendary scene in the diner. Each character is finely sketched and the dialogue is brilliant. Jack Nicholson gives a real depth to his characterisation of a lonely iconoclast adrift in the world, seeking, but unable to find, a self-understanding.

Five Easy Pieces established Rafelson and Nicholson as unique talents of the very first order. Since making the film, they have worked together a number of times to varying degrees of commercial and artistic success. Their last venture together was the rather disappointing comedy Man Trouble with Ellen Barkin.

Review by Stephen Townsend
Taken from EUFS Programme 1993-94