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Five Easy Pieces (1970)

Director:
Bob Rafelson
COUNTRY
USA
GENRE
Drama
NORWEGIAN TITLE
-
RUNNING TIME
98 minutes
Producer:
Bob Rafelson
Richard Wechsler
Screenwriter (based on her novel):
Carole Eastman


Cast includes:

CHARACTER ACTOR/ACTRESS RATING
Robert Eroica Dupea Jack Nicholson
Rayette Dipesto Karen Black
Elton Billy Green Bush
Catherine Van Oost Susan Anspach ½
Carl Fidelio Dupea Ralph Waite
Palm Apodaca Helena Kallianiotes
Parita Dupea Lois Smith
Terry Grouse Toni Basil
Nicholas Dupea William Challee

 

Review

Bob Rafelson's unanimously praised character drama Five Easy Pieces was seen by critics as the serious and implicit opposite to the often flamboyant and stylistically richer films of the period in American filmmaking which Pauline Kael hailed as the most rewarding. This is a dense and completely sombre portrait of contemporary social alienation with few other objectives. There is power in Jack Nicholson's complex, multi-talented, multi-flawed character, and Nicholson has the edge and potency to make him effective and appropriately tragic, but the film remains lifeless, uninspiring and emotionally detached. Robert Dupea's heartache and ambivalence isn't transferred to the viewer. Instead we sit and observe a social criticism which for modern audiences will seem both dated and somewhat irrelevant.

Copyright © 27.5.2008 Fredrik Gunerius Fevang

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