Five Easy Pieces

Every selfish, stunted male should watch Five Easy Pieces.

This film is sort of similar in themes to High Fidelity, but without the record shop, or like About A Boy, but without the new friends.  Five Easy Pieces has no happy ending and no great awakening, but the film works anyway, if only as a rumination on the angst of an aimless generation and a reminder to me to not be such a selfish asshole.

Jack Nicholson plays Robert Dupea, a classical pianist who for some reason has taken to a life of working on an oil field and shacking up with a waitress (and other random women).  He is a classic example of an underachiever, a man who has squandered his talent and found himself going nowhere.

Karen Black plays Rayette, Robert's girlfriend, a ditzy but sweet woman who loves him to pieces despite his faults.  She's going nowhere as well, but the difference is, she either doesn't know or doesn't care (maybe both).

Robert doesn't fit well with the blue collar folks he surrounds himself with, including Rayette and his oil rig buddy, Elton.  Robert is verbally abusive toward Rayette, and he can't stand Elton's little boy.  The idea of having children of his own is repugnant to Robert.  He seems to think his life has a greater purpose, but he doesn't know what.

And then he finds out from Elton that Rayette is pregnant.  And then he flips out a little.

He chews out Elton, then walks over to his foreman and quits his job.  Then he turns around to see two guys in suits chasing Elton down, beating him up, and cuffing him.  Turns out, Elton robbed a gas station a year previously and his past is just catching up to him.  Robert puts up a brief struggle, but once he realizes the men in suits are cops, he doesn't resist.  He watches Elton hauled away, and that's pretty much the end of their friendship.  Elton is not heard from for the rest of the film.

Robert runs from every challenge, gets annoyed at anything outside of his control, and reacts like a petulant child when he doesn't get what he wants.  There's a famous scene in a diner when Robert attempts to order breakfast his way, but the waitress won't allow substitutions.  Go here and scroll down to read a transcript.

Five Easy Pieces was one of my first rentals from Netflix in February 2003.  My initial thoughts about the film were colored because I was experiencing films in a slightly new way.  Renting a DVD but not getting the box seemed like a foreign concept.  I was more apt to rent films that my local Blockbuster didn't stock, so I was digging into catalog releases, older films, rarer films, and often, whatever Netflix recommended.  I was in a master's program in English at the time, so I was interested in character studies and quiet little films.  I was renting some strange films, and I was initially very disappointed in Netflix.

This film was among the disappointments.  My first impressions of Five Easy Pieces were not good.  I found the film ponderous and thin at the same time, just full of bitchy, unhappy, selfish people, led by Jack Nicholson.  Without likable characters, I was left wondering why I should even care about these people and why I was even watching.

Because of the apparent lack of a traditional plot, I was bored and a little frustrated.  Much of the film didn't make sense.  If Robert Dupea is supposed to be such a great classical pianist, why doesn't he play the piano?  What happened?  Why does he only play the piano when he's either clowning around or trying to seduce women?  What is the freaking point of this film?  There were few easy answers.

Something about the film nagged at me, though.  I had the feeling that I'd missed the point, that I'd need to look at this one again.  I kept the film in the back of my mind and eventually snagged a used copy on DVD, but hadn't re-watched until tonight.

I have thought about the film many times since 2003, though, and as I've thought, I've wondered about that nagging feeling.  What was this film saying, and why couldn't I pick that up the first time?

Part of the explanation lies in that this film is not designed to speak to Generation X, of which I'm a member.  Many of the nuances in this film were lost on me the first time, and I needed more context to really get what the filmmakers were saying.

So I started thinking about context.  What was going on in the world and in cinema at the time of this film's release?  This is a post-Woodstock, post-hippie-dream, early '70s disillusionment think piece and character study.  That really matters to one's understanding of this film.

Oh.

But that's not the only nagging bit.  In my efforts to understand the film, I had to understand Robert, and now that I'm a little older and in a different place in life, I do (I think).

My life is the reverse of Robert Dupea's.  I grew up in a blue collar home.  My family is unrefined by traditional standards.  This is not a slight to them, but just the way I was raised.  I battled against that for years.  I don't talk like them...most of the time.  I don't think like them...most of the time.

In a way, I rebelled and went the opposite direction of Robert.  He embraced a blue collar lifestyle.  I embraced a traditionally white collar profession and the "elite."  I frequently find myself trying to reconcile the differences between the two worlds.

I also used to be a selfish prick.  In my own search for identity, I dated around a lot and often found myself dating someone who was not at all what I wanted.  But I didn't want to be alone, either.  I found myself in situations that were so uncomfortable, I wanted to run (and a few times, I did).  I once stopped calling a girl because I found out she read Harry Potter books.  I'm not saying I was right.  I'm saying I was wrong.

But I never abandoned a pregnant woman at a gas station a la Robert Dupea.

With another viewing, I see and understand much more of the conflict within Robert.  So much of this film is understated that viewers accustomed to something more plot-driven or containing obvious character arcs will struggle here.  I did the first time.

This film takes place in the early 1970s, and Robert typifies the alienation and rebellion of adults around his age at that time, backing away from his upbringing because he feels he doesn't belong, and disenchanted with the world ahead — the world he created for himself.

"I move around a lot because things tend to get bad when I stay," Robert confesses to his catatonic father toward the end of the film, betraying his restlessness and alienation.  His whole life is one big existential crisis driven by his id.  He reacts to difficult situations with all the wisdom and maturity of a teenager, as though his evolution as a human being stopped when he stopped playing the piano early in life.

He plays the piano for his brother's girlfriend and moves her to tears, but feels nothing inside himself.  He confesses that he chose the easiest piece to play for her.  He doesn't get a charge out of much of anything.

I get the feeling he's looking for that charge, but every time he thinks he's found what he wants, he realizes that he's wrong...again...so he abandons it.  He abandons people and responsibility, and in the end, has nothing to show for his life.

"There isn't anybody gonna love you AND look after you as good as I do," Rayette says to Robert in the car as they drive away from his family home together, toward their future together.  He wants no part of that future.

Five Easy Pieces is not an easy film.  I despise Jack Nicholson's character and feel for those around him, who are so often hurt by his selfishness and immaturity.  Five Easy Pieces also is a funhouse mirror for a guy I used to be or could've been if I'd given in to my base desires, and as such, the film is a reminder of what not to do with my life.  Sometimes I need that.