Five Easy Pieces

Plot synopsis:
Bobby Dupea (Jack Nicholson) works in a California oil field (shot in and around the city of Taft in the San Joaquin Valley) with his friend Elton (Billy "Green" Bush), who has a wife and baby son. Bobby spends most of his time with his waitress girlfriend, Rayette (Karen Black), who has dreams of singing country music, or in the company of Elton, with whom he bowls, gets drunk, and has sex with other women. Bobby has evidently not told Elton that he is a former classical pianist who comes from an upper-class family of musicians.
Rayette gets pregnant and Elton is arrested for having robbed a gas station a year earlier. Bobby quits his job and leaves for Los Angeles where his sister, Partita (Lois Smith), also a pianist, is making a recording. Partita informs him that their father, from whom Bobby is estranged, has suffered two strokes. She urges Bobby to return to the family home in Washington state, to visit their father.
Rayette threatens to kill herself if Bobby leaves her, so he reluctantly asks her along. Driving north, they pick up two women headed for Alaska, one of whom is obsessed with "filth". The four of them are thrown out of a restaurant when Bobby gets into an argument with a waitress who refuses to accommodate his special order. Reaching his destination, Bobby, embarrassed by Rayette's lack of polish, registers her in a motel before proceeding to his family home on an island in Puget Sound.
He finds Partita giving their father a haircut, but the old man seems completely oblivious to him. At dinner, Bobby meets Catherine Van Oost (Susan Anspach), a young pianist engaged to his brother, Carl (Ralph Waite), a violinist. Despite personality differences, Catherine and Bobby are immediately attracted to one another and make love in her room.
Rayette runs out of money at the motel and comes to the Dupea estate unannounced. Her presence creates an awkward situation, but when Samia, a pompous family friend, ridicules her, Bobby comes to her defense. Storming from the room in search of Catherine, he discovers his father's male nurse giving Partita a massage. Now more agitated, he picks a senseless fight with the nurse, who knocks him to the floor.
Bobby tries to persuade Catherine to go away with him, but she declines, believing he does not love himself, or indeed anything at all. After trying to talk to his unresponsive father, Bobby leaves with Rayette, who makes a playful sexual advance that he angrily rejects. When Rayette goes in for some coffee at a gas station, he gives her his wallet and then abandons her, hitching a ride on a truck headed north.

Tags: cult, romantic

Review:
Of course the storyline of an alienated young man (Jack Nicholson as Robert Dupea), walking away from all that is expected of him, and indeed walking away --if not running away-- from his prodigious gifts, and doing it all with a cocky attitude, no longer resonates quite the way it did in 1970.
Or, as Jenny, Ali McGraw's character in Love Story (also a 1970 film) put it, "Love means never having to say you're sorry." Meanwhile, unfolding alongside the Dupea character, was Karen Black's tour de force performance as the big-haired clingy-dependent waitress girlfriend, Rayette, and doing it to a medley of apropos Tammy Wynette tunes.
The one I feel that stands out and symbolizes the essence of the film is where Jack plays Chopin in the piano room while Rafelson's camera does a slow 360 around the room, glancing at pictures of his life before he fled from it.
Robert contains many of them, but has generally abandoned creating anything.I would first like to comment on why I feel the film received the title, "Five Easy Pieces".
There is a scene near the end of the film where Robert is speaking with his father and in a way apologizing for his own life and not living up to the expectations of the family.
It was the film that showed audiences what Jack Nicholson could do, after having worked for many years in movies that were seen only by real cinephiles, but not by a wider audiences.
The only thing is the copy we saw was not anamorphic in format, which on key scenes almost shows a blank screen while the characters talk off camera!Bob Rafelson and Carole Eastman created a screen play that dealt with existential themes, a rarity in the American cinema.
Mr. Rafelson was at the height of his creative period, something that later projects seem to contradict the promise he showed at the time.Bobby Dupea, the main character of the story, is a complex individual who has left a life of privilege and culture behind to become an oil rig worker and getting away from his previous life.
That contrast comes more obvious when Bobby goes back home and meets Catherine, his brother's fiancée, who is a musician and seem to be more attuned with Bobby than the simple minded Rayette."Five Easy Pieces" was a film that showcased the enormously talented Jack Nicholson doing some interesting work.
In a way, we have seen all along the film how restless Bobby has become and it's clear that in spite of his being with Rayette, she will never understands how to make him happy at all.The reason for watching "Five Easy Pieces" is Jack Nicholson.
Everybody and their dog always raves about the chicken salad sandwich diner scene and the dialogue between the main character and his invalid father but for my money the money shot is when Bobby first tells Rayette he has to visit his family ALONE and as he tries to leave without her (which wouldve ended up being the most humane thing he does in the film!!) he finds his car wont start at the crucial moment and he completely loses it in his car cursing a lotta four letter words under his breath.
Based partly on the life of eccentric Canadian concert pianist Glenn Gould, this is a wonderful character study of Bobby Dupea (Nicholson) who seems to have  everything: musical talent, education, supportive family - but who, as the by-line says "is never satisfied".
His father's illness forces him to return to the family home on Puget Sound, bringing his girlfriend Rayette (beautifully played by Karen Black).
Not even the fact that Dupea is played by the great Jack Nicholson can mask the truth that the movie which tells his story is downright dull.
And this is still a boring movie.Jack Nicholson is certainly one of our finest actors and he does the best he can here but this film just isn't salvageable.
But he doesn't live the piano man's life and I guess there is supposed to be some conflict, but many people have talents they don't take to the next level, etc.This movie was nothing special, if you ask me, other than a highly recommended and lengthy waste of time..
And I know the arguments about 'life not always being coherent or logical', but I think films can be.I also remember rave reviews 30+ years ago concerning the performance of Helen Kallianiotes, playing a hitchhiker.
But in 1970, Nicholson took on a role that would propel him not only toward the Academy Awards, but to movie audiences again with his leading role in Five Easy Pieces.In Five Easy Pieces, Nicholson plays Robert "Bobby" Dupea, a man who's a oil rigger at day and a free-wheeler at night.
The director or even the screenwriters would've thought that by casting an younger actor into this picture might make the audience identify with this person.There's one classic scene that explains entirely the attitude of Nicholson's character.
He is a actor that will do things differently and opposite and as soon as he changes the game, he can be satisfied with what he wants.Besides Nicholson, Karen Black does a terrific job, playing Nicholoson's dim-witted waitress girlfriend.
Even after watching this movie for the first time, I got a sense that the running theme of loneliness that applies directly toward the Karen Black's character.
Five Easy Pieces stands out thanks to a great performance from Jack Nicholson and Karen Black, as well as a great screenplay that refines the rebellious ideas of the times that were prevalent in movies such as Easy Rider.
The film is build as a road movie around Bobby Dupea, a middle-class intellectual turned truck driver and working in the oil fields.
Playing a once promising pianist (his full name is Robert "Eroica" Dupea - he was named after Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, Op. 55, The Eroica Symphony - no more, no less) who chose to abandon his musical family ("Five Easy Pieces" refers to five pieces by Chopin), Jack Nicholson has rarely been better.
The film stars Jack Nicholson, with Karen Black, Susan Anspach, Ralph Waite, and Sally Struthers in supporting roles.The film tells the story of a surly oil rig worker, Bobby Dupea, whose blue-collar existence belies his privileged youth as a child prodigy.
The film was selected to be preserved by the Library of Congress in the National Film Registry in 2000.Summary: Classical pianist Robert Dupea (Nicholson), who comes from a family of musicians, works in a California oil field.
"Five Easy Pieces" is a very unusual film because the star (Jack Nicholson) plays an incredibly unlikable guy.
They are about as unlike him as possible.If a psychotherapist watched this film and wanted to form a diagnosis of the two main characters, they would probably see Robert as a relatively high functioning antisocial personality (meaning, his violations of laws and norms are usually NOT the sort to get him imprisoned) and Rayette as a Dependent Personality.
Five Easy Pieces (1970)Watching this movie, there is no lingering question about whether the studio era of film-making had anything left.
All I saw was Jack Nicholson playing an extremely depressed man, Karen Black dressed up to be made to sexy as his dumb girlfriend and then there was the rest of the cast.
Jack's character, Bobby, is a skilled musician from an upscale musical family who turns his back on all of this to work on an oil rig.
Dupea runs from job to job, woman to woman, town to town.I thought that the movie may have redeemed itself when Dupea visits his sick father, but unfortunately the father couldn't speak, which made for a somewhat one-sided reconciliation.A high point of the film is the classic "chicken salad" scene, about getting what you want.I've enjoyed other movies like Easy Rider and Withnail and I which were also set in the late sixties/early seventies, but both of these movies had a strong rock soundtrack to help them along.
In Five Easy Pieces we mainly have classical and country music.It has been said that Dupea is an archetypal non-conformist character which Nicholson used as a steppingstone to later roles.
We first see Robert Dupea, Jack Nicholson, working on an oil rig and spending his free time with his waitress girlfriend Rayette, Karen Black, at the local bowling alley.
Getting an earful by his relatives about how a great pianist he could have been Robert tries to get away from them, like the dozen or so jobs that he held over the last three years, and ends up between the sheets with family friend Catherine Van Oost, Susan Anspach.
Jack Nicholson's first staring role in a major picture, after being in B-type films for 12 years, and he showed there in the move "Five Easy Pieces" as Robert Dupea.
Jack Nicholson's talented anti-hero and Karen Black's gum-chewing waitress girlfriend lead an outstanding cast in this moving study of unfulfilled lives.
Bob decides to quit his job and travel to Washington state to visit his family, something he hasn't done in years, taking Rayette along with him, expecting virtually nothing from those he hasn't seen or shown much love for in his recent years.Five Easy Pieces explores the uglier side of humans through various characters that lack the ability to see the bigger picture or the perception of those they love.
He defies everything we've presumably learned about treating others with respect and gratitude, and Nicholson, an actor known for rebellious roles and his large personality in films throughout the beginning of his career, is convincing in embodying such a role.Five Easy Pieces comes at a time during in American cinema known as the "New Hollywood" era, when the star system was being put into effect, films were becoming large-scale investments for studios (this particular film cost $1 million to make, a surprising feat at the time), and directors, particularly young ones, were beginning to forge names for themselves.
Not only is the subject matter weightier than what was expected from Hollywood at the time, it's also much more honest and cuts deeper than may mainstream films ever did at the time.Starring: Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, Billy Bush, Lois Smith, and Ralph Waite.
Then after about thirty to forty minutes the film takes a change as we find out that Bobby left a family behind who were all musicians, that's found out during the scene when he meets his sister in the recording studio.
Really all in all the movie is beautiful from the scenes of Jack the way his character is so direct, and his screen time with both Black and Anspach are nice treats.
When I watch Five Easy Pieces, I always am reminded of another classic work of fiction, that of J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in The Rye, I think that Jack Nicholson's character Bobby is similar to a would-be, grown-up Holden Caulfield, if Holden Caulfield was a classically trained musician that is.
Jack Nicholson's character plays an unhappy man working at an oil rig.
This is when the film got my attention.Robert Dupea (the main character) is a man looking for an answer to the questions that plague all of us.
But also, when he leaves that family, he still finds no meaning.People looking for the typical contrived cliches found in movies, such as a likeable main character and a happy ending should avoid this film but if you're looking for an interesting philisophical film then pick this up at the video store..
"Five Easy Pieces" is the best of the six Bob Rafelson pictures that Jack Nicholson has appeared in, and his performance confirmed his star status, laying the basis for the roles of his maturity.
The problem was the main character Bobby Eroica Dupea played by Jack Nicholson.
Nicholson gives a measured and emotional performance as a man who gives off an aura of 'existence precedes essence', rootless and raw.There is a powerful moment in the film where Bobby and his simple and naive girlfriend Rayette pick up two women, one of them (a mesmerising performance by Helena Kallianiotes) completely disillusioned with Western society.
Jack Nicholson is of course known as one of the best actors of his generations and one of the first films to show case his talents was the drama Five Easy Pieces, which earned him his first Oscar nomination.Bobby (Nicholson) is a talented pianist who is running from his past.
Even the house of Bobby's wealthy family was tight and cramped.Looking at director Bob Rafelson's filmography it is clear that Five Easy Pieces is his best film.
There is a good cinematography as it shows off the landscapes or using hand-held cameras when needed.Five Easy Pieces works as a personal drama with a man falling up he his own selfishness and self-destruction, a film looking at family relationships and the differences with class and education, a man's attempting to escape and as a road movie exploring different parts and different elements of America..
In the film's first half hour, Dupea seems like a simpleton who works in the California oil fields, and then comes home and mistreats his girlfriend while downing beers.
Five Easy Pieces is one of American cinema's essential character studies, a brilliant and fascinating look at the life of a young man who sometimes lashes out with a blinding rage at the world and the people who love and care for him.
Bobby (Jack Nicholson) has left behind his talent of playing classical music to become an oil field worker.
Jack Nicholson delivers a wonderful performance -- back when he was still playing characters other than Jack Nicholson -- in this well done but awfully gloomy film from Bob Rafelson.Nicholson plays Bobby Dupea, a worker on an oil rig with decidedly anti-social tendencies, who returns home to make peace with his dying father.
Once there, he's confronted with the cushy, privileged life he left behind, and we learn that he turned away from a promising career as a concert pianist.What I like most about "Five Easy Pieces" is its ambivalence toward its main character.
"Five Easy Pieces" is the story of Robert Dupea, a directionless man who gave up an upper class life with great potential as a classical pianist to work on an oil rig.
His pregnant girlfriend Rayette (Karen Black), comes with him.The strength of this movie is entirely in the main character.
It's an amazing character story: Not feeling comfortable with his elite and artsy family, Robert Dupea (Jack Nicholson) leaves home and starts working as a blue collar worker in search of adventure.
Jack plays Bobby Dupea in this movie, a seemingly tough but sentimental character.
Anyway Five Easy Pieces = Great Movie, Great Story, Jack Nicholson.
"Five Easy Pieces" (1970) is a well-known drama about Robert Dupea (Jack Nicholson) who leaves behind his high society upbringing in preference to being a drifter, working on oil fields and so on.
Bob Rafelson directs this unique character study of Robert Dupea(Jack Nicholson, superb and complex performance) who is a gifted pianist who nonetheless works in an oil field with his troubled friend.
Bobby Dupea (Jack Nicholson) has run away from his promising upscale past living on an idyllic Northwest island as part of a talented family of musicians to work the oil fields of Texas and take up with the trailer park set.
The supporting cast led by Black's Rayette, Billy Bush Green and Lois Smith is outstanding with special mention to some scene stealing moments by Helena Kalliontios as a neurotic environmentalist.Five Easy Pieces is one of the many excellent works that contributed to American Film's last golden age when the play was the thing, speaking to an age of discontent and confusion with ignoble and flawed characters trying to sort out the American Dream on their terms.
The film reflects a moment of transition in American movie-making, looking backward to a decade of experimentation and forward toward the disillusioned, downbeat, post-Watergate '70s, with Jack Nicholson, in one of his definitive early roles, playing the vagabond black sheep in a family of classical musicians, blessed with talent but not with the emotion to interpret it.
Watching it again -- really the best film of Jack Nicholson's career -- makes me realize why:  what a great movie!It's interesting to compare Jack Nicholson in this movie with his role in "About Schmidt."  Can't you imagine a character like Bobby Dupea getting too old to continue working as an oil rigger in Alaska?
It is fascinating and, ultimately, depressing to witness the greatness of Jack Nicholson's performance in "Five Easy Pieces".
Nicholson seems hopelessly inseparable from the repressed and volatile character he is playing in this film, and thus makes this piece of acting one of his finest.
This movie is a great character study, exploring where Robert came from and how he wound up living such an empty life.
Jack Nicholson and Karen Black star in this movie about a man who feels inadequate and out of place in his life and in his family.
(But I don't know what has been said, as I make it a rule to not read other reviews and not be influenced.) But, as "Five Easy Pieces" is a 1970s classic film, it was on my short list of movies to see and I loved it.
Brilliant.The heart and soul of the film is Jack Nicholson's Bobby.
"Five Easy Pieces" revolves around Jack Nicholson's character Robert Dupea and his relationships with those around him.
In "Five Easy Pieces", Jack Nicholson plays a California oil rig worker, Bobby Dupea, who becomes disenchanted with his job, his closest friend and his girlfriend.
Rafelson's character study about an oil rigger(Nicholson) who returns to his hometown to comfort his dying father, while bringing his waitress girlfriend (Black) along with him while he confronts his rich family.
Nicholson does very well in his portrayal of the character in this Oscar-nominated role, while Karen Black was also very good in this film.