Five Easy Pieces marks a progression in mainstream film that began with the lifting of the Hays code and the rise of young talent looking to make films that spoke to their generation. Hollywood, and the Academy specifically, was in need of young blood both in front of and behind the camera, leading to the uprising of film bad boys such as Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, and Jack Nicholson. With that rise came a new kind of film, the kind that didn’t have to follow the old templates of getting from point A to point B and then ending on a happily ever after. In 1969, we had Easy Rider with its infamous burning motorcycle over the end credits. I wasn’t alive for its initial release, but I can imagine audiences who were used to the old Hollywood sitting in their seats and trying to make sense of what they had just experienced. The youth digged it, though, probably with the assistance of recreational drugs.
This was what would be called the American New Wave, a genre of films that supported quirky supporting characters, launched the careers of actors who would not have found a home in mainstream films a generation before, and gave the youth of the day an outlet to see the world represented the way they saw it. It was gritty, sometimes chaotic, and didn’t always make a lot of sense. It also promoted going your own way, even if it seemed that way was against your own best interests; free love and free choices and to heck with the consequences.
Easy Rider and Hells Angels on Wheels introduced us to a Jack Nicholson that was a far cry from his Roger Corman creature feature days. This wasn’t the Nicholson we saw on The Andy Griffith Show in the mid 60s, either. Jack was just starting to figure out the kinds of characters he excelled at and milked it for all he could. There were glimpses of this genius in those two films, but it was limited to his screentime. Still, who can forget the man wearing a football helmet on the back of a motorcycle nor what finally befalls his character at the end of Easy Rider? Auteur cinematographer László Kovács captured it in breathtaking detail so that all these years later we can still watch it and be haunted by it.
A year after Easy Rider, Nicholson is back, this time in the starring role as Bobby Dupea, an oil worker in California. We spend the first half of Five Easy Pieces just trying to get a bead on this character. He lives in a rundown trailer, works long hours in a blue-collar, back-breaking job, and spends his evenings hanging out with fellow oil worker Elton (Billy “Green” Bush), bowling. Bobby is living with his girlfriend Rayette (Karen Black), an aspiring country singer who is obsessed with Tammy Wynette. She has gotten pregnant, but Bobby only learns about this from Elton, who has a family of his own. When Bobby spends an evening with Rayette, Elton, and his wife and young child, it is obvious that Bobby is uncomfortable in this setting, causing us to wonder what may be behind all this discomfort.
After Elton is arrested on the job, Bobby quits and travels to Los Angeles to visit his sister Partita (Lois Smith), who is making a classical piano recording. There, he learns that their father has suffered two strokes. Partita urges him to reconcile with the family in Washington while he still can. Thus kicks off the second half of the film, where much about his past and what he is running away from is revealed. We learn that, despite his blue-collar existence, he came from wealth and a classical music upbringing, but for reasons on his own, he has left that behind to follow his own path.
While we don’t fully understand his decisions, we do get enough to gain some semblance of his character and why he chooses to leave all of this wealth and comfort behind. Still, he wants to avoid embarrassment in front of his family, trying to leave Rayette behind so that the family doesn’t judge his life so harshly. When she insists on coming to Washington with him, he drops her off at a hotel to keep her away from his family. She eventually shows up anyway and her reception is less than warm, causing Bobby to explode on his family for looking down on her. Yet that is also what he is doing to them, viewing them as pompous when they react to her, even though he, too, is embarrassed of her.
We get our first sense of who Bobby really is early on when he and Elton get stuck in a traffic jam. In front of them is a flatbed truck with a piano loaded up. Bobby gets out of his car, climbs on the flatbed, and starts playing some music, harshly to match his distemper. In a bit of visual poetry, the truck turns off the main road while the rest of the traffic stays going straight. Bobby, though he had everything handed to him, is not the kind of person who goes with the flow. It’s a bit of a misnomer to label him part of the counter-culture movement; he’s also not part of society, either. He’s a man running away from life and domesticity, from expectations.
We learn that he was raised to be a piano prodigy and, though he can play well, he chooses not to. This choice, like so many others he makes, has led him to a life lacking the comforts available to him. It’s telling, during the most famous scene in this film, that when he refuses to conform, even in the manner of what side dish comes with his entrée in a diner, that it leads to him not getting any food whatsoever. He realizes this after the fact, too, but in the moment he cannot help himself. The film will culminate in him running away yet again, leaving behind everything but the shirt on his back, including leaving behind his girlfriend and their unborn child, just because he cannot conform.
The ending of this film is exactly what it should be. It would ring false to have gone against his character to force a happy ending. Instead, it is depressing and upsetting to think about what he has done and why. But it is honest, too, and we have followed Bobby all this way, learned about him, and realize that this is the right ending, like it or not. It’s impulsive and it’s selfish, but we have just spent over ninety minutes learning that those two words describe him perfectly, so we shouldn’t be surprised by it.
This is some of Jack Nicholson’s best work. It’s nuanced, subtle at times, and over-the-top at other times. This predates his work in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Shining, examples of unhinged Jack Nicholson. Those roles were not too far off, and he would ride that manic energy for most of his remaining career. It’s great to see this early work and see just how magnetic he was and why he was such a big deal in the 70s. This was a star in the making and, though we may not like him much, we are still drawn to him.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Bob Rafelson and Richard Wechsler
Best Actor: Jack Nicholson
Best Supporting Actress: Karen Black
Best Original Screenplay: Adrien Joyce and Bob Rafelson
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Release Date: September 12, 1970
Running Time: 98 minutes
Rated R
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, and Susan Anspach
Directed by: Bob Rafelson
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