Review of Five Easy Pieces (1970) by Randall H — 07 Jun 2007

Astonishing portrait of American middle class alienation, 5EP paints the portrait of a talented young pianist who has abandoned his middle class roots in the Pacific North West in favour of a blue collar life on a Texas oilfield with a Tammy Wynette wannabe girlfriend-played to perfection by Karen Black.

Nicholson is volatile, restless and repressed. Throughout the entire film he is simmering with barely concealed disatisfaction which often manifests itself in childish tantrums, the occasional drinking binge and a particularly famous outburst with a waitress in a roadside cafeteria.

What makes the film is Nicholson: you simply cannot take your eyes from him. Charming, charismatic and likeable, he also has a sullen, detached streak and a violent temper. If he isn't stifled and distressed by the crude limited intellectual capacity of his conversations with fellow oil rigger and friend Billy Green Bush, he's yelling at some pretentious snob who patronises his girlfriend at a social gathering at his parent's home.

The man simply doesn't fit. He despises the pretensions and expectations of his middle class raising and cannot stand the gambling and hard drinking working class lifestyle and milieu he has taken refuge in to escape it.

He runs away, cheats, drinks and yells his way through life. Perhaps the only true thing in his life is his affair with Susan Anspach (his brother's fiance), whom (in the film's most poignant scene) plays a simple but very evocative Chopin piece for her on the piano.

Filled with beautiful landscapes, captured by Lazlo Kovacs, tightly directed by Bob Rafelson, and arguably Nicholson's greatest performance, 5EP is the character study that all to follow must have surely emulated.