6/13/2023 0 Comments 5 easy pieces![]() ![]() She s destined to have her heart broken again and again when he treats her shabbily, but has nothing else to live for, really. His girlfriend Rayette (Karen Black) is a waitress who clings to him as her own personal life s meaning. ![]() When we first see him, he is working as an oil field rigger with his friend Elton (Billy Green Bush), who is arrested not soon after. Nicholson had lessons forced on him all through his formative years and became a great musician, but since he identified it with the family, he left it all behind, taking a series of menial jobs and meaningless affairs with women. Nicholson s character, we eventually learn, is viewed as the one failure in a family fu ll of musical maestros. Pianos and piano playing figure big in Five Easy Pieces. I didn t see it as such, although Nicholson does an excellent job and the movie is host to a few of the most memorable scenes ever, such as the sequence where Nicholson tries to order chicken salad sandwich in a diner ("I want you to hold it between your knees!") and the earlier scene where he jumps out of his car during a traffic jam and plays a piano tied to the back of a truck. Easy Rider, One Flew Over the Cuckoo s Nest, Hell s Angels on Wheels (you can tell I m reaching) and Five Easy Pieces, generally hailed as one of the best films ever made. Jack Nicholson was the poster boy of the angry, angst-ridden dramas of the late 60s and early 70s. FIVE EASY PIECES is a riveting American story about a former musical ingénue whose gift becomes a burden to him as he grapples with the implications of his choices in work, relationships, and family. The film features characteristically gorgeous cinematography from Laszlo Kovaks and a soundtrack that skillfully offsets Tammy Wynette with Chopin. When Bobby sets his sights on his brother's fiancée, Catherine Van Ost (movingly played by the beautiful Susan Anspach), things seem to be getting better-that is, until Rayette arrives and Bobby realizes he is caught in a collision between his two lives. Bobby hates the repressive atmosphere: his brother is unbearable, his father can't speak, and his sister is involved with his father's supercilious male nurse. ![]() When he visits his family home on Puget Sound after a long absence, things don't get better. In the film, Rafelson and Nicholson capture the difficult, awkward life of a gifted man who hasn't discovered a way to fully express his talent or found his place in the world-and maybe never will.Bobby is a classic misfit-disillusioned about being a musician, unhappy as an oil rigger, and unable to make a commitment to his girlfriend, Rayette (ubiquitous '70s starlet Karen Black), who hopes for marriage. FIVE EASY PIECES is one of the most notable collaborations between Jack Nicholson and director Bob Rafelson, with Nicholson in an outstanding performance as Bobby Dupea.“When we sense the boy, tormented and insecure, trapped inside the adult man, Five Easy Pieces becomes a masterpiece of heartbreaking intensity,” reviewed Roger Ebert, who rated this four-star film to be his favorite of 1970 and went on to name it “one of the best American films. Jack Nicholson as Bobby Dupea, aimless oil worker and classical piano prodigyīobby Dupea’s homecoming leads to an existential crisis in Five Easy Pieces, one of the many triumphant highlights of Jack Nicholson’s early filmography and the second of his 12 Academy Award-nominated roles. Jack Nicholson as Robert “Bobby” Dupea in Five Easy Pieces (1970) Vitals ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |