Five Easy Pieces Movie Review:


Jack Nicholson has been one my favourite actors since the very first time I saw him on screen way back in 1989 in Tim Burton's Batman. For me he completely captured what it was to be The Joker. I immediately hit the Nicholson back catalogue and soon discovered that when it came to movies, the man had rarely put a foot wrong, though most people acknowledge that he kinda lost his way in the 90's ('Wolf', 'Mars Attacks', 'Man Trouble'). Jack still rallied a major comeback with 'As Good As It Gets' which, for my money, is the best N.Y. story this side of 'Mighty Aphrodite', and Bob Rafelson's compelling neo-noir; 'Blood& Wine'.

That said, it was a long time before I finally came across 'Five Easy Pieces'; an independent film made in 1970 and also directed by Bob Rafelson. The movie sees Jack as Robert Eroica Dupea; a gifted pianist who turned his back on his bourgeoisie roots to live a blue-collar life and work at the oil refectory; he gets into various scrapes, chats up some women at the bowling alley, needlessly humiliates his nice- but- dim girlfriend (a Golden Globe winning performance from Country singer Karen Black) and even plays an impromptu concerto on the back of a grid locked truck.

But when he gets a call from his sister to come home and visit his ailing father, the past comes flooding back, and Bobby is forced to contend with who he is/was and which life he should now choose. 'Five Easy Pieces' is a story of tortured genius, about a guy who's too smart for the common people and too free-spirited for the stuffy aristos, it's a real dilemma for him, an internal crisis that tears deep into this character's psyche and explains why he finds it so hard to adjust anywhere.

The final scene is vintage Nicholson, and you can't help but smile as, just when you think he's finally sorted himself out, he goes and does something that's bang-out-of-order, but is just so right for that moment in time you reckon maybe you would've done the same thing. This scene, though relatively uncinematic in it's execution, serves to answer all the movie's questions in one cold, sweeping shot, ultimately, 'F.E.P' is about someone who'll forever be an outsider, a conflicted man who can never be happy, simply because he doesn't trust himself much less anyone else. Also look out for the classic diner scene, where Nicholson advises a feisty waitress to hold the chicken between what might be deemed to be an uncomfortable region of her anatomy.

Apparently, the film's title alludes to Bach's Chromatic Fantasy, Mozart's E-flat major concerto, Chopin's Fantasy in F minor and Fugue, Chopin's Prelude in E minor and Mozart's Fantasy in D minor; all of which are as hard to play as the infamous 'Rach 3' in 'Shine', the clever thing being, that though the aforementioned pieces are supposedly killer works of music, Bobby Dupea can play them with relative ease. Don't expect to be blown away by this movie the first time you see it, for it's a very small scale, sometimes slow and intimate film which is all about character development and taking you inside the mind of a man who has no idea who he is.

The Boss once sang about 'Better Days' and in that song he said that "…it's a sad man my friend who's living in his own skin, and can't stand the company…"; Bobby Dupre is that man, and 'Five Easy Pieces' is that kind of a film, not the kinda movie you can watch too often, but one that you have to see once, albeit just for the fine acting and deceptively clever script.

A mini-masterpiece, and another excellent performance from The Man.

Kashif Ahmed

Site Contents Copyright© The Z Review, unless used with permission.This site has no intention to infringe on the rights of the film owners of Five Easy Pieces and intellectual copyright holders of the movies mentioned herein & hold copyright over the movie, characters, merchandise & storyline.