Five Easy PiecesIt's not impossible to be alone, and yet surrounded by people...not impossible at all. Isolation is a state of mind, but that doesn't mean it isn't real. There's this sense that you're supposed to be something, supposed to do something with your life. They say that you have potential, and that you can do wonderful things. What happens when you don't want to do wonderful things, when you don't want to just follow the line? Maybe you've got something else in mind for yourself...or maybe there's nothing--nothing at all. And then what? You end up blowing like a leaf in the wind, a whirlwind all sound and fury, the empty pride that comes with having no direction is cold comfort.
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Jack Nicholson plays "Robert Eroica Dupea"--his full name, but we hear him more often called Bobby by his girlfriend, Rayette Dipesto (Karen Black) and others for a good while; it's not until he comes home--the family homestead in upstate Washington--that he gets called Robert by his estranged family. Estranged...it's not really the family that's so estranged, but Bobby; he always seems to have some kind of chip on his shoulder, or some sadness, some need to get satisfaction. Bobby Dupea works an oil rig with his trailer park bowling buddy with a distinctive laugh, Elton (Billy "Green" Bush). They do what the blue collared folk do, and Bobby goes through the motions with them. He never seems much at ease with Rayette--"Ray" as he calls her--and frankly looks down upon her. He doesn't really say it--he has at least enough class not to say so to her--but we see it when he walks in the door to the sound of a Tammy Wynette LP on the turntable--one of many we can surmise--and his eyes roll and he shakes his head; Ray must be home. What makes Bobby such a snob, much less a music snob? His upbringing more than likely; but if he's made such an effort to avoid home, why suffer the same away from it? Because Bobby isn't happy anywhere; happiness is a state of mind, and there's more to Bobby's mind than he cares to let on. He comes across as charming enough, and he has no issues with flirting with a couple of bowling alley floozies to get some kicks on the side. But when it comes down to it, these are hollow triumphs--they are just passing time, because the real battle is something Bobby's become all too good at running away from. It's safe to say that Bobby's a cad, but his indifference and even recklessness is also self-destructive--drinking and driving, even right before work, picking fights with his father's male nurse--Bobby's selfishness is rarely doing him any real favors. He's both aloof and ready for a battle, like he doesn't even relate to anyone anymore...or is afraid to.
Jack Nicholson's persona of Bobby Dupea is one that would set a course for the characters he played in films henceforth. There's something about Bobby which even reminds me of his take on Jack Torrance from The Shining, even down to the black turtleneck. It's not a lot that we know about Bobby from the start, and our assumptions about his situation turns out to be misleading, just like him. Five Easy Pieces; although the title's never directly explained--it actually comes from the number of classical music pieces played in the course of the film--I get more of a metaphorical meaning from the scene when he has returned home to visit his sick father and he is asked by his brother's fiance, Catherine (Susan Anspach), to play something for her on the piano. Classical music runs in this family's blood; he and his siblings, Carl Fidelio (Ralph Waite) and Partita (Lois Smith) have names inspired by the works of Beethoven. Robert plays Chopin and he comments afterward that it was an easy piece he was taught as a child, something he played better at eight than now. Catherine responds that the performance was great because of the emotion in it; Bobby replies that there was no emotion. Five pieces to play--we hear from them what we want, the player just playing the bars. Is it true, or is this just a shield, protection from opening up and being left vulnerable? During his playing, the camera pans across the top of the piano--violins are present, more music--and then to pictures of the family at different ages, and pictures of famous composers. This is Robert Eroica Dupea's legacy, but it isn't really his--it's something he's running from. Why? That mystery is Bobby's and his alone; he won't share it with us, not even with the ever understanding audience in the dark of the theater--because he is afraid of getting hurt. I think watching Five Easy Pieces, we all get a different sense from Bobby--each of us trying to unravel this enigmatic loner. Some are going to find that burning sense of individualism and freedom compelling, someone who gets just a little too sick of the regulations at a greasy spoon, and tries to circumvent an ornery waitress' rigidity at letting him get some toast by ordering a chicken salad sandwich; you know where you can hold the chicken. Alternately, I find a kind of kinship in his feeling that he's never really comfortable around anyone else; it's not that he really hates everyone, but that he just can't relate, and that's because he hasn't really ever found that path--that tone--to guide him...or that he's been avoiding it. Yes, Bobby runs from his problems, and that problem is responsibility. Sometimes, he gets away with it, like when he's stuck in traffic on his way to his job he hates and doesn't need, and he discovers a piano--in good shape--on a flatbed, and this is when we discover he is not just an oil rigger, but a gifted pianist posing as a laborer. Bobby's been posing all his life--or at least for as long as we can expect this has been going on. He puts on a performance for the gals at the bowling alley, allowing their mistaking him as a TV personality to go unchallenged. I believe that Bobby was told, often, that he was destined for greatness, that he was some kind of scion for music. He plays well...he claims he's played better; truth is, he's probably been avoiding it, although he probably still has some passion for it, even if he runs from it. It's probably part of what drew him to Ray; they both have a love of music, even if it is of differing kinds, even performing it, like when Ray sings her favorites by Tammy Wynette to Bobby in their long car ride to the homestead. When Ray tells Bobby she will love him better than anyone, we believe it, and suspect Bobby believes it, and I think that explains the ending better than anything. Bobby doesn't believe he deserves love--he has someone devoted like Ray in his life, and only pushes her away, chasing after other women out of some sense of achievement. He hears about love and reacts with anger. His rage comes from feelings of alienation, but there's no real direction. Even when he leaps to the rescue of Elton shortly after telling him off when a couple of guys in suits come for him, he is swinging without knowing why--just looking for a reason to unload. He lashes out indignantly--even sometimes with justification, like at the pompous intellectual Samia Glavia (Irene Dailey), who openly espouses cold indifference as a virtue, and sneers at Ray for having the gall to like "television"; but wasn't Bobby doing the same? Bobby's fire sheds no light, it is all just flailing in the dark to mask that he is afraid, that he has shut himself off to protect himself from the dangers of life, of choice, of being anything. I understand these feelings of Bobby well, and I pity him for it as a result. He will run away off of a cliff unless he finds some kind of emotional stake to drive into the firmament.
Recommended for: Fans of a deeply introspective drama about a man who rails against the world around him, less out of simple searching than out of the discomfort of not really belonging. It's a tale that people who feel that they just don't fit can relate to, I think, and one which would show a sign of things to come from the great Jack Nicholson.
Jack Nicholson's persona of Bobby Dupea is one that would set a course for the characters he played in films henceforth. There's something about Bobby which even reminds me of his take on Jack Torrance from The Shining, even down to the black turtleneck. It's not a lot that we know about Bobby from the start, and our assumptions about his situation turns out to be misleading, just like him. Five Easy Pieces; although the title's never directly explained--it actually comes from the number of classical music pieces played in the course of the film--I get more of a metaphorical meaning from the scene when he has returned home to visit his sick father and he is asked by his brother's fiance, Catherine (Susan Anspach), to play something for her on the piano. Classical music runs in this family's blood; he and his siblings, Carl Fidelio (Ralph Waite) and Partita (Lois Smith) have names inspired by the works of Beethoven. Robert plays Chopin and he comments afterward that it was an easy piece he was taught as a child, something he played better at eight than now. Catherine responds that the performance was great because of the emotion in it; Bobby replies that there was no emotion. Five pieces to play--we hear from them what we want, the player just playing the bars. Is it true, or is this just a shield, protection from opening up and being left vulnerable? During his playing, the camera pans across the top of the piano--violins are present, more music--and then to pictures of the family at different ages, and pictures of famous composers. This is Robert Eroica Dupea's legacy, but it isn't really his--it's something he's running from. Why? That mystery is Bobby's and his alone; he won't share it with us, not even with the ever understanding audience in the dark of the theater--because he is afraid of getting hurt. I think watching Five Easy Pieces, we all get a different sense from Bobby--each of us trying to unravel this enigmatic loner. Some are going to find that burning sense of individualism and freedom compelling, someone who gets just a little too sick of the regulations at a greasy spoon, and tries to circumvent an ornery waitress' rigidity at letting him get some toast by ordering a chicken salad sandwich; you know where you can hold the chicken. Alternately, I find a kind of kinship in his feeling that he's never really comfortable around anyone else; it's not that he really hates everyone, but that he just can't relate, and that's because he hasn't really ever found that path--that tone--to guide him...or that he's been avoiding it. Yes, Bobby runs from his problems, and that problem is responsibility. Sometimes, he gets away with it, like when he's stuck in traffic on his way to his job he hates and doesn't need, and he discovers a piano--in good shape--on a flatbed, and this is when we discover he is not just an oil rigger, but a gifted pianist posing as a laborer. Bobby's been posing all his life--or at least for as long as we can expect this has been going on. He puts on a performance for the gals at the bowling alley, allowing their mistaking him as a TV personality to go unchallenged. I believe that Bobby was told, often, that he was destined for greatness, that he was some kind of scion for music. He plays well...he claims he's played better; truth is, he's probably been avoiding it, although he probably still has some passion for it, even if he runs from it. It's probably part of what drew him to Ray; they both have a love of music, even if it is of differing kinds, even performing it, like when Ray sings her favorites by Tammy Wynette to Bobby in their long car ride to the homestead. When Ray tells Bobby she will love him better than anyone, we believe it, and suspect Bobby believes it, and I think that explains the ending better than anything. Bobby doesn't believe he deserves love--he has someone devoted like Ray in his life, and only pushes her away, chasing after other women out of some sense of achievement. He hears about love and reacts with anger. His rage comes from feelings of alienation, but there's no real direction. Even when he leaps to the rescue of Elton shortly after telling him off when a couple of guys in suits come for him, he is swinging without knowing why--just looking for a reason to unload. He lashes out indignantly--even sometimes with justification, like at the pompous intellectual Samia Glavia (Irene Dailey), who openly espouses cold indifference as a virtue, and sneers at Ray for having the gall to like "television"; but wasn't Bobby doing the same? Bobby's fire sheds no light, it is all just flailing in the dark to mask that he is afraid, that he has shut himself off to protect himself from the dangers of life, of choice, of being anything. I understand these feelings of Bobby well, and I pity him for it as a result. He will run away off of a cliff unless he finds some kind of emotional stake to drive into the firmament.
Recommended for: Fans of a deeply introspective drama about a man who rails against the world around him, less out of simple searching than out of the discomfort of not really belonging. It's a tale that people who feel that they just don't fit can relate to, I think, and one which would show a sign of things to come from the great Jack Nicholson.