Contains spoilers.
The central character in this film is Bobby Dupea, a blue-collar Texas oilfield worker who travels to his family home in the Pacific North-West when he discovers that his father is dangerously ill after a stroke. In the course of the film, the audience comes to learn that Bobby is not originally from a working-class background; he comes from a well-to-do and artistic middle-class family, and he himself was once a promising concert pianist before he abandoned his career.
What we never find out is exactly why Bobby gave up his life in music. While talking to his father, he says, `You know, I was never that good', but there is no indication whether this is the truth, or the result of insecurity about his talent, or an excuse he has invented. What is undoubtedly true is that Bobby is in revolt against his family, not just against their ambitions for him to excel in music, but also against their entire lifestyle. The family have a deep love of high culture in all its forms, and particularly of classical music. Bobby has abandoned not only his career in music but also his family's cultural values. His life in Texas, revolving around heavy drinking, bowling alleys, country-and-western music and casual womanising (even though he has a live-in girlfriend, Rayette), seems to have been designed to fit every middle-class stereotype about how the working-class live.
The family's obsession with music is shown in the names they have given to their children; Bobby's full name is Robert Eroica Dupea, his brother is Carl Fidelio and his sister is Partita. Names, in fact, are important in this film. The central character's split identity is shown by his two names- he is still Robert to his family, and only Rayette and his Texas friends call him Bobby. Rayette's name seems to have been invented to fit her social background, it being something of a film convention that a female character with an unusual name consisting of a supposedly feminine suffix added to a male name will be drawn from the poor underclass.
Rebellion against middle-class values is frequently presented in films (and in other art forms) as something laudable, but not here. This is not an ideological film that aims to attack the vices of the bourgeoisie or to extol the virtues of the proletariat, but rather a character study of a largely unsympathetic character. Bobby is selfish and irresponsible, unable to accept any restrictions on his freedom to do as he pleases or to consider the happiness of others when this conflicts with his own wishes. He retains, moreover, some of the more unattractive middle-class characteristics, especially snobbishness. A man who forces his girlfriend to stay in a motel because he is too ashamed of her social origins to let his family meet her (as Bobby does to Rayette) can hardly be said to have freed himself from middle-class values. Ironically, when Rayette does eventually meet Bobby's family, they get on much better than he had feared.
There has been much discussion of the precise significance of the title `Five Easy Pieces'; my interpretation would be that, besides the obvious musical meaning, it also relates to Bobby's character. In music, he will never try a difficult piece if he can get away with playing an easier one- as he does when his sister asks him to play for her. In life too, he is always looking for the easy way out, the least amount of responsibility or the least emotional risk. The final scene, where Bobby abandons Rayette on impulse to start a new life in Alaska is perhaps the best example of this, but he also treats his family badly, as when he seduces his brother's girlfriend.
Although there are some other good contributions, particularly from Karen Black as Rayette, it is Jack Nicholson's performance as Bobby that stands. Nicholson always holds the viewer's attention, whatever he is doing, and in his set pieces can make the film spark into life. The scenes where Bobby confronts a surly waitress in a diner and a snobbish friend of the family are among the best in the film, charged with a sort of angry humour. Throughout the whole of his performance, in fact, there is something that would become a Nicholson trademark- an undercurrent of suppressed anger. This combination of barely-controlled (and sometimes uncontrolled) rage and grim humour prefigures a later, and even better, Nicholson performance in `One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'.
`Five Easy Pieces' is not a film of the same calibre; it can be dull and static in places and, like many character studies of unsympathetic characters, it can seem lacking in heart. It is, however, worth seeing, if only for one commanding performance. 6/10.
