Five Easy Pieces

Rafelson’s quietly combustible portrait of a man forever fleeing himself forged the archetypal Jack Nicholson persona – feral and wounded, each quality feeding the other in a thoroughly embodied, startling performance.

Carole Eastman’s screenplay mixes offhand humour with jagged melancholy, capturing the road movie’s core impulse: movement as evasion rather than pursuit. Laszlo Kovacs’ cinematography turns every roadside stop into a study in alienation. With Karen Black, Lois Smith, Bill “Green” Bush, Susan Anspach, Toni Basil and Helena Kallianiotes in one of cinema’s most memorable cameos.