Movie Review: Five Easy Pieces
Director Bob Rafelson in 1969 created one of the film era’s seminal statements on modern masculinity with the work Easy Rider. With its uncompromising portrayal of drug-running free-wheeling bikers tied up in a world of sex and violence, the film left an indelible mark on a generation and catapulted young actors Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson into stardom. Rafelson followed it up a year later with Five Easy Pieces, a character study that, while not as iconic as Easy Rider, offers just as much insight into the souls of modern men.
The movie tells the tale of Bobby Dupea, an oil rig worker and womanizer who is also secretly a brilliant pianist and heir to a wealthy family of classical musicians. Bobby spends his carefree days bowling and drinking with his fellow rig worker Elton. He lives with his homely waitress girlfriend Rayette but casually has affairs with other loose women as the opportunities come. The first 25 minutes of the film effectively paint a picture of Bobby’s world and lifestyle. It’s well-acted, endearing, and pleasantly atmospheric, especially a fun moment where Bobby plays a piano on the back of a truck in the middle of a highway traffic jam.
Then the film takes a major shift around the 30 minute mark. We meet Bobby’s sister Partita, a high strung professional pianist recording artist. She implores Bobby to finally return home to the family estate to visit their ailing father. Around the same time Rayette tells Bobby she is pregnant. Reluctantly, Bobby allows her to tag along on a road trip back to his family home, a mansion on an island in the Puget Sound. Along the way they meet a couple of hippie girls and get into a few mishaps. When they finally arrive, Bobby forces Rayette to stay behind in a motel, as he is embarrassed by Rayette’s unrefined manners.
The second half of the movie, where the previously free-spirited devil-may-care attitude of Bobby must come to terms with his upper class family’s world, is superb. Until this point, we may have wanted to root for Bobby — to give him credit for walking his own path instead of just following in the footsteps of his equally gifted brother and sister. But what becomes evident in this second act is that Bobby’s rebellion is an empty one. His relationship with Rayette (and indeed all women he meets) is entirely self-indulgent. His refusal to use his musical talent does not come from some positive vision or motivation to do something else, but rather is just a form of self-destructive impulsive egoism in a vain attempt to “be free” and escape the responsibility of his family’s legacy. In a bit of irony, there are multiple times when Bobby gets angry about Rayette and Elton’s lower class mannerisms, proving that in spite of his “above it all” attitude he still cares so much what others think of him.
Bobby’s brother Carl, though a bit awkward and aloof, is consistently portrayed as a good guy. Bobby repays this by sleeping with his brother’s enchanting fiance. Yet the fiance ultimately rejects Bobby in the end telling him that he has no right to ask her to love him when he “loves nothing, not even himself.” She, like the others, sees through him. At the end Bobby tearfully tries to reach out to his father who has become unresponsive after multiple strokes. Bobby admits that his life is not so much an attempt to really go anywhere or do anything intentional but rather just him messing up and running away from bad situations. The finale demonstrates this point as Bobby abandons his pregnant girlfriend Rayette at a gas station opting to hitchhike with a trucker into an unknown future. Thus we see the destructive hypocrisy of the “lone wolf” who is above society’s rules but still needs that same society to clean up the messes he leaves behind.
If we begin with the understanding that Bobby is not meant to be sympathetic we can better appreciate Five Easy Pieces as an impressively layered character study. How many of us would love to have been born into a wealthy family of brilliant musicians? It’s hard to like someone throwing all of that away “just because.” Yet even though we don’t like Bobby, we learn a lot from him thanks to Jack Nicholson’s marvelous acting. He demonstrates incredible range in the role. His performance is at times deceptively subtle, infuriating, hilarious, and melancholy. It is a beautiful film at times. In particular a scene where Bobby plays piano for his brother’s fiance as the camera slowly pans over photos of his childhood really stayed with me. Five Easy Pieces sneaks up on you in its quiet moments. Much like Easy Rider it paints a picture of modern men lost in carnality and the all-consuming need to be “nonconformists” consequences be damned. It speaks to the futility of rejecting traditional values while lacking a coherent alternative.
I have seen a lot of films and TV shows about characters that are just trash human beings. What makes me appreciate Five Easy Pieces is that it does not portray Bobby’s awfulness as something we are supposed to tolerate or blame on society or anything like that. Rather it feels more like a cautionary tale. It isn’t just the “incels” or losers that have it rough; even being a handsome, charming, talented, wealthy man who gets all the girls he wants can still be a miserable fate to be avoided. The moral and spiritual implications of that are worth exploring.
Grade: B+
