FIVE EASY PIECES (1970) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
In the first thirty minutes of "Five Easy Pieces," there's a moment between Jack Nicholson's Robert Eroica Dupea and his waitress girlfriend, Rayette Dipesto, played by Karen Black. Robert attempts to clean-up after a spat with her, and promises he'll never leave her. But he makes promises the way car salesmen cut deals, and his awful treatment of the woman he's ostensibly in a relationship with raises the question of how far a man can pull at the frayed ends of his life before his humanity is irrevocably undone.
Director Bob Rafelson's passing compelled me to revisit his fifty-two year-old masterpiece, and marvel at how Nicholson and Black elevated its grim material into the highest echelon of film history. It's a story about a musical genius from America's sequestered upper-class who rejected the advantages of his upbringing so he could work the oil fields for minimum wage and sleep with floozies. Robert's inner tension radiates into the tapestry of the lower-middle-class America he seeks refuge in, and Rafelson's vision of California in 1970 presages the stark imagery of Robert Adams' Colorado in The New West. It's a film you feel as much as see; the slippery plastic booths of bowling alleys, the greasy-spoon service of roadside diners, and the bug-ridden mattresses of seedy motels. You can even smell the warm beer in Robert's can and the stale chewing gum and cigarettes on Rayette's breath. Great movies show us ordinary people and places in striking ways, and every second of this film does just that.
All of this beauty could have been undermined by the protagonist's cynicism, but Robert has many other dimensions. He visits his sister in Los Angeles, who tells him their father is dying, and suddenly a man who has spent his life running from his past is obligated to return home. He reluctantly brings Rayette along, and is subjected to her obsession with Tammy Wynette. But he visits his father alone, in one of the most affecting scenes of Nicholson's career, and a kind of magic happens, something only true artists can manage. It's his best performance, due in no small part to Rafelson's direction.
With a character like Robert, it would be tempting to exposit his nuances via dialogue alone, but writer Carole Eastman crafted a kinetic man on paper who was then brought to life on screen by the only person in Hollywood with enough animus for the job. We discover his musical talent when he's stuck behind a piano on a truck bed in a traffic jam. His antipathy for his girlfriend is woven into his abusive treatment of her, and we witness his fear of success by watching his wordless confession in the void between the life he could have lived, and the one he chose instead. This film is a monument to the greatness achieved in American cinema, and the puzzle of a lost man is resolved with anything-but-easy pieces.
--- Bill Fontaine
