Five easy pieces [DVD]

In this complex, episodic drama, Bobby (Jack Nicholson). a brilliant classical pianist who makes a living working as an oil rigger, is summoned to the deathbed of his dying father. The events that transpire during his reluctant return home lead him to question his identity. Director Bob Rafelson and screenwriter Adrien Joyce (aka Carole Eastman) used the creative control afforded by the film’s low budget to craft a European-influenced character study, catching a cultural mood of anomie and resentment as it was embodied in Bobby. Neither older generation nor hippie, Bobby fits in nowhere, and his desire for independence conflicts with his emotional emptiness. Nicholson’s performance of simmering frustration resonated with 1970 audiences caught between Nixon’s silent majority and the troubled counterculture. Offering no easy answers to Bobby’s existential crisis, “Five easy pieces” is one of the pre-eminent films in the early 1970s cycle of alienated American art movies, as even the fantasy of rebellion is reduced to merely running away. Also stars Karen Black.