‘I’m sorry it didn’t work out…’
The ’70s is a decade in cinema that I have never truly connected with. So many of the films that defined that era (Dog Day Afternoon, The French Connection, The Sting etc etc) have either passed me by completely, or I’ve seen them, but struggled to engage with them on any kind of emotional level. Five Easy Pieces was a little like this too. I can see the craft behind it. Jack Nicholson’s performance is stellar (although not on a patch on Cuckoo’s Nest or The Shining), and while certain elements of the plot resonated, too much of it seemed to rely on Nicholson’s intense charm, with the rest of the cast veering between being bland or forgettable. Not unlike Chinatown, another Nicholson classic from this era that also left me a little cold. I wanted to like Bob Rafelson’s classic, I really did, especially given as it was one of my dad’s favourites, but there is some kind of spark missing between me and this particular era of cinematic history…
Robert Dupea (Nicholson) is an upper class dropout who leaves his life as a musician to work on oil rigs, sleep in motels and drink in bars. As Frank Reynolds might put it, Dupea missed the filth, the squalor. This leads him down several dark alleyways involving punch ups, sexual encounters and lots of drinking.
That kind of synopsis would usually be right up my street, and there is no denying that Nicholson is great here. Whether it’s using his considerable charm to persuade his woman to stay in a motel for two days while he visits his ailing father, or even when losing his temper in a diner in a fit of crashing plates and smashed glass, Nicholson is never less than electrifying.
It is the plot, or lack of it, that lets Five Easy Pieces down. Sure, the speech Dupea gives to his father is an incredible moment, and the denouement is affecting, but not enough happens here to justify the film’s considerable reputation.
All in all, a movie that I respect, but one that I found difficult to love…