Five Easy Pieces [DVD]

This film proves beyond any other that there is much more to Jack Nicholson than the star, it showcases his enormous acting talent. For many people, the larger than life persona he adopts in so many of his films, most ntably in Batman and The Witches of Eastwick, is how they know him and this work is certainly entertaining but it is in the smaller often lesser known films that Jack the major acting talent appears. This is evident in offerings such as the brilliant Sean Penn thriller "The Pledge", the not so small "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" and this, in my opinion Nicholson's finest film.

The film tells of a talented but reluctant pianist who leaves his privileged, middle class life behind in favour of an uncertain and impoverished yet infinitely more satisfying life as a manual oil field worker. He shares his life with an ill-educated and rather annoying girl-friend who embarrases him in public and who represents the low-life conditions he has adopted for himself. When word comes through that his sick father is close to death he returns to his previous life reluctantly taking his girlfriend with him. On the way, Nicholson acts out one of the most famous scenes from any of his films as he shows his displeasure with a waitress who is reluctant to alter the menu to accomodate his desire for a chicken salad sandwich on brown bread (at least he has a healthy diet!).

The final part of the film acts as a metaphor for the dichotomy of America's middle and working classes and the seeming inability they have for co-existence. Realising that the problem is entrenched and that as a thinking member of the American middle class who balks at its hypocrisy and one for whom a working class life fails to satiate his needs, the central character in a brilliant open ending makes the ultimate opting out step for those who find it difficult to find a place in society and simply walks away from all he knows to see what's over the next hill. In short,he has the nerve to do what so many other people would like to do.

The film is quite simply a piece of cinematic excellence with BRILLIANT performances from all concerned:- cannot possible be recommended highly enough

Five Easy Pieces is a simplist road movie which gave Jack Nicholson as it's main performance, respect from Hollywood which has been granted ever since. This is the film that Nicholson made his start.

Robert Dupac is a typical blue-collar oil worker who migrates a lot to find temporary work and accommodation with his dumb waitress girlfriend. Dupac keeps a low profile who mixes in with fellow workmates he treats as friends, but whom don't understand him. Dupac, then has to face his sister whose own father is gravely ill and has to come clean about the piano career he ran away from.......

Five Easy Pieces came out at the beginning of the seventies when the hippie movement was slowing dying out. The film is about lost opportunity of youths being denied free spirit and the urge of an anti-establishment against the wishes of their domineering families'.

His first with director Bob Ralefson, Nicholson displays Robert Dupac to be a man of despair, one who fails to question his troubled actions, who moves on and tries to erases the memory but lives with the pain of confirment and has no direction in his life whatsoever. Dupac has a rebellious soul, keen to break away from the fringes of society, but keeps drifting in and out, trying to settle down. Dupac feels that his people should learn to have fun, enjoy each other and hang out together instead of forming obessions like his musical family who pursure him to reach his goal of being an pianist.

The editing kept Dupac in the focus always and the slow revealing point of why his life amounts to nothing with a dead-end job. Nicholson stands out and for all the right reasons: his apperance; his attitude; his eccentric behaviour; his grief and sadness.

Many people say that Ralefson only had one film in him which is Five Easy Pieces-a tragic, roller-coaster, poetic piece of the generation that were ignored by the masses. Best recommened for a hardcore fan of 1970s semi-independant cinema or any Jack Nicholson fan.

This is an example of the cinematic brilliance which Hollywood displayed briefly during the 70s before the age of the mind-numbing blockbuster. This film has a fantastic script and performances (Nicholson's best in my opinion), and is made so well, with such depth, tenderness, humour, intelligence and GENUINE human emotion that it is a joy to experience, and highlights so easily the generally poor standard of American cinema, but also its potential.

The transfer is a good one, the anamorphic picture a big plus. The sound is good old mono, but hey, most of the best films ever made are mono, and no amount of remixing them is going to enhance the film or make it into some kind of super surround sound experience, which they aren't anyway.

I highly recommend this to anybody with a serious passion for cinema. A film triumph.