Five Easy Pieces: A Short Analysis and Admiration

Five Easy Pieces- (1970) Jack Nicholson and Karen Black, Directed by Bob Rafelson.

I had no idea that the title meant five of Beethoven’s musical compositions. But this film is definitely a haunting and sensitive story of a man who had so much self-loathing that he has to keep escaping any situation he finds himself in. It’s also his own disillusionment about his upper-middle class and educated upbringing and ambivalence that made him bounce from job to job and to want to pretend that he’s a working-class joe-six pack like everyone else—making him more legit with his street-cred, rather than being seen as a failed classical pianist.

Nicholson who plays Robert Eroica Dupea, doesn’t mince words. He’s intolerant of dishonesty, sweet-things, and he’s angry at the world. He degrades his floozy waitress girlfriend, Rayette (played by a wonderfully pathetic and touching Karen Black) and mechanically sleeps with one hooker to the next. It all builds to the film’s unforgettable climax where he has to return home and face his dying father and his forgotten past, only to realize literally, as a pianist he’s failed, except for the five easy pieces, compositions that had been “easy” for him.

The film’s devastating and clinical ending of Robert leaving Rayette behind at a gas station and hitchhiking into a truck symbolizes a wistful and sad truthfulness that most of us can relate to: the desire to keep escaping lives we don’t wish to lead. Though he has decided to leave his pregnant girlfriend behind to abruptly start a new life, he admire and applaud him for having the guts to do so; even at the expense of those who truly cared for him. It’s also a metaphor for the brutal realities and violence of the 1960s seeping over into the beginning of the 1970s, the uncertainties of the Vietnam conflict, of escape is what everyone wished to enact. It’s truly an unforgettable film.

Western Influence

For some reason, I've been attracted to, more or less about reading books and watching films set in the Southwestern part of this great country we live in.


Take for example the novel Plainsong by Kent Haruf and the films Paris, Texas , Border Radio, and Two Lane Blacktop. All works concerning a central commonality of characters feeling displaced and disillusioned; perhaps of life, perhaps the lack of love, or the failure to connect with others. Or characters attracted to the possibilities of life and living it up in the rural wonderland of rugged landscapes, open roads, and hot deserts.

They all seem to share a sense of security, in spite of all the disillusionment, that everything is going to be okay; or that they'll find what they're looking for. Happiness isn't going to come easy, or it may never come at all. But there's a sense of peace that does make me jealous.

I went to New Mexico and Colorado two years ago during summer vacation from graduate school. I loved every minute of it. The dry heat. The sweeping landscapes of desert and turquoise. Canyons that were high, oh so very high that it made me dizzy with fear. But I loved the people, and the landscapes. A feeling of contentment and ruefulness that I can't quite describe.

Characters such as the two men of Two Lane Blacktop, played by musicians Dennis Wilson and James Taylor driving on the open air; or the woman searching for her missing husband in Border Radio; or that sad-sack, character Harry Dean Stanton played in Paris, Texas all try valiantly to find happiness and meaning through open landscapes and dingy motels alongside the hot desert sun. But somehow they all have a certain peacefulness that I've been fascinated with and attracted to for quite some time now. One day, and who knows. I'll be over there. Yes, I will. I just don't know how long it's going to be till when.