Word: nicholson
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Adrien Joyce's screenplay does not have to cover much territory (in time or space) or involve many characters to bring its goods home. It tells the simple story of a moody redneck named Robert Dupea (Jack Nicholson), who works on an oil-rig by day and sleeps with Ray (Karen Black), a dumb-blonde diner waitress, by night...
...that give force to that scene and some of the other, unpleasant scenes in the movie are the writing and acting, which, suddenly from time to time, strike right at that something we recognize as truth. If there is any actor who can be faulted, it is only Jack Nicholson, who uses his Easy Rider hillbilly accent and mannerisms in the early parts of the film-a characterization that makes little sense once you discover that Robert was raised in a cloistered homestead in the Pacific Northwest...
...RAFELSON'S film, Five Easy Pieces, is already being touted as this year's Easy Rider, for whatever that's worth. The movie falls into two parts. In the first, an oil rigger played by Jack Nicholson lives the beer-drinking, bowling, broad-screwing life which most screenwriters and intellectuals imagine occurs in lower-middle working class settings. But we shortly discover that the boozer is also a piano player manque: he is a wandering, gifted member of an extraordinarily talented musical family. Nicholson is the prototype Alienated One, a sort of prodigal son with balls, and his journey...
...example: A scene in a diner. Nicholson has had the classic crisis with the dumb waitress. She accepts no menu substitutions, cannot understand even his compromises. The moment arrives when our blood and Nicholson's are boiling with the same vengeful fury. Instead of responding to the situation (and response is what it's all about), Nicholson destroys it. Rather than commenting on the violent hate which such a situation calls up in us, rather than suggesting ways out these petty confrontations which add up to the trivial but crippling despairs of our existence, Five Easy Pieces plays a puerile...
...another example: At the end of the film, Nicholson is again faced with a crisis: he is now alienated from both his bequeathed identity (gifted pianist) and his assumed one (oil rigger cum sumbitch). The moment is poignant enough, but the response of theprotagonist of Five Easy Pieces is only a depressingly immature reassertion of character consistency-he blows town. When what is desperately needed is a fresh way to look at something, we are given something to look at. Apocalyptic world-views are fashionable, and it's a respectable ambition to depict what it is that drives...