Review of Five Easy Pieces (1970) by Edith N — 22 Sep 2008

Actually, I think "Eroica" would make a better girl's name. It's certainly, for a male, one of those middle names you don't share. On the other hand, most pieces of music have vaguely feminine titles (leaving aside such obvious counterexamples as the Jupiter Symphony), if they have titles at all. (Most symphonies do not.) One would not, in addition, name one's son "pastoral," for example. Were I, through some miracle, a world-famous musician, I would probably not name my son after a piece of music. I would, if forced by being that sort of person, give him a middle name like "Wolgang" or "Ludwig." A musician, not a piece of music. Perhaps that is just me.

At any rate, Our Ostenisble Hero, Robert Eroica Dupea (Jack Nicholson), has run away from a family that he doesn't feel he belongs to. He works on an oil field and has a trashy girlfriend and trashy friends. His girlfriend (Karen Black) is a Patsy Cline devotee, playing, from what we can tell at the beginning of the movie, the same half-dozen songs over and over again. (Annoying no matter what music it is.) He, it turns out, was a classically-trained pianist, before he was a dropout from society. His mother has died, and his father has had a stroke, and he must go home and deal with it. Rayette, the girlfriend, persuades him to let her go with him. However, when they get to his family's house on some island up here in Washington, he sticks her in a hotel for two weeks while he gets into dealing with his family.

I don't like Robert Eroica Dupea. I don't care about his odyssey of self-discovery that ties in with his odyssey from Texas to Washington. Indeed, I dislike him intensely. He's a selfish, petty little man. Even when he theoretically stands up for Rayette, he wouldn't do it if he didn't like the woman who's picking on her anyway. Rayette is also unpleasant. She's petulant, and she doesn't seem to recognize that she and Robert are very different people. Which, of course, they are--I dislike them in very different ways. I've known many people like Robert, and I've hated having to deal with them. I generally ignore people like Rayette, when I can, but people like Robert won't be ignored. They pretend to be dispassionate, but watch them if they aren't getting the attention you want.

This is one of the Jack Nicholson movies everyone knows. I suspect, however, that a lot fewer people have seen it than wish to admit so. We'll be getting to [i]Easy Rider[/i] in about the next week or so, and I don't think most people have seen that, either. In fact, there are very few classic movies that I've come across that haven't left a majority of my friends saying, "I haven't seen that." And, indeed, I haven't seen a lot of them myself. Even I, who watch a movie or two or three most days, haven't seen more than about a third of the movies I ought to Before I Die, apparently. I've seen half or two thirds of Great Movies I and II. (I don't remember which one this is in.) I think perhaps it is easier on the older. After all, Roger Ebert has been seeing movies in theatres some twice my life. In thirty years, how many classic movies will I have seen by sheer age when they were available first? Will my seeing [i]The Dark Knight[/i] in the theatre equal having seen, well, [i]The Godfather[/i], the movie it supplanted?

You see by this that I didn't much get into [i]Five Easy Pieces[/i]. I thought it was good, if not Great, and I could see having to See It Before You Die. And, maybe, to a Jack Nicholson fan, it [i]is[/i] great. I do think Jack Nicholson is a fine and talented actor, though I'm not sure he deserves to be the only person alive with three acting Oscars. (Oh, for a better choice the year of [i]Gladiator[/i]!) I also think that he deserved it more than the rejection of George C. Scott, who won for [i]Patton[/i] that year and would not accept.