Word: rafelsons
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...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...
There are brilliant moments in the film, moments in which Rafelson has crystallized what-it's-like-now and why-everything-is-so-depressing. Helena Kallianiotes as a dykey hitchhiker who is obsessed with ecology ("All this crap!") and mankind ("Man-man is such a shit! ") is a brilliant parody of an elusive type, the ardent but empty-headed advocate of well-intentioned but flaccid causes. (That she is portrayed as a Lesbian-in fact, that the more insipid characters of the film are women-betrays a nasty truth about the movie.) The bowling, beer, and sex scenes are authentic...
...movie fails in a most important way. Having set up the situation-having shown what the hell is wrong, having performed the mimetic function of art, having established a confidence which audiences grant only after strong reassurance-Rafelson blows...
...virtues of this rich, contradictory work. Smith, a resourceful performer, has to work solely with her face; she does not get much aid from the script. Nor does Nicholson. Is Robert running away from excellence, or from the fear of failure? In one long pan, Producer-Director Bob Rafelson tries to supply an answer. Robert plays a Chopin prelude in an attempt to seduce his brother's protégée (Susan Anspach). Up moves the camera to a wall of pictures. There are the young siblings, smiling, optimistic, untouched. On an adjacent wall, the children are grown...
...film's least reliable contribution comes from Rafelson, a creator of TV's Monkees. When he is working with Robert's family, he shows a thorough understanding of the tragedy that resides in love. But he is capable of making the hardhats a mere composite of beer and bowling balls. As if to give the other side unequal time, he grossly carves his intellectuals...