(Originally written July 6, 2006)

Five Easy Pieces is a film about Robert Eroica Dupea trying to find his place in society. On the one hand, he is a blue-collar worker fed up with the intellectuals of upper-class society, yet he is a brilliant pianist from a wealthy family. Robert attempts to reconcile these two aspects of his life but never succeeds, unsatisfied wherever he goes. Many of the best scenes in the films involve Jack standing up against those unwilling to live their lives free from the danger of reason and regulation. There is, of course, the classic sequence in which he attempts to order a piece of toast, but a more powerful moment in the film is when Robert stands up for dimwitted girlfriend Rayette Dipesto (played by Karen Black) after she is being criticized by the type of pseudo-intellectuals that infuriate him. This is possibly Jack Nicholson’s best performance because we see his character’s vulnerability in the midst of his attempts to be strong and indifferent in the face of a world he is unhappy with. The film has a heartbreakingly open-ended final shot that offers no easy answers.