Five  Easy  Pieces

As Jack Nicholson films go, I rate this as joint number 1 with " Cuckoo's Nest". This remains to be one of the best character study's ever made. Jack Nicholson's performance is amazing, his anger, his frustration, his insecurity . The scene in which Bobby Dupea breaks down while talking to his crippled father is one of the most moving scenes in film that I have ever see. After one of his drinking bouts, he meets his sister, who tells him about their ill father. Bobby obviously doesn't hold the company of his family in high regard, insisting that he'll stay with them for one week only. Bobby is a selfish man, but a selfish man with a conscience, if that makes sense. He tells his pregnant girlfriend that he's going to his family home, and that he never told her that anything would ever amount to their relationship. He walks out to his car with his suitcase, and has a fit because somewhere at the back of his self-absorbed mind, he knows that what he is doing is wrong, and so brings her with him. Bobby is a drifter. Clearly a talented pianist, he has forsaken doing what was expected of him to drift around, different jobs, different women. One night he's seen convincing his girlfriend that he loves her, and the next he cheating on her with some woman that we are not even introduced to. This just symbolises I think, how frequently this happens, who knows, maybe Bobby doesn't even know her name. Bobby's girlfriend is a well meaning woman, who lacks class and sophistication, but seems to love Bobby. When at his father's home, Bobby again cannot keeps his hands off a woma, this time his brother's girlfriend, who eventually rejects him. Bobby has a one-way heart-to-heart talk with his father about how his life has gone, eventually becoming tearful as he seems to realise how he's wasted his life. When Bobby and his girlfriend are travelling home, they stop at a service station. She goes in to the shop for coffee, and in a sudden decision, Bobby hitches a lift with a truck driver going to Alaska, leaving his pregnant partner,car and money behind. The film ends with the truck departing the gas station and driving off. One cannot help feeling that this is not a deliberate ploy by Bobby to hurt his girlfriend, just a desperate decision by a desperate man searching for something he cannot find… happiness.
There are a number of sequences that really stick in the mind; when Bobby picks up the two lesbians, one of who is obbsesses with the " filth" of people . Then there is the famous scene where Bobby cannot get what he wants to eat in a restaurant. His anger is clear to see when, after making sarcastic comments, the waitress ejects him from the restaurant as he sweeps everything of the table in frustration. The ending is subtle, but brilliant. It's just the kind of thing that it seems Bobby would do, but has been rarely seen in film. A happy ending would kill this film… but there wasn't one.