Five Easy Pieces - 1970 - 7/10
Oil rigger Bobby works the fields, rolls with buddy Elton, sashays with Rayette.
Elton gets arrested, Rayette is preggers, Bobby goes to visit his sister in Los Angeles.
Film grows into a contrast of class, which Americans don’t like to consider.
Bobby, once upon a time, was Robert, promising Classical pianist.
While he fled that upper class world, its pressures and anxieties, he cannot escape the baggage.
Baggage being his family, along with Rayette, a simple soul with whom he has nothing in common.
More of an arthouse hit, Nicholson searing as the wayward son, trapped between conformist worlds.
Karen Black likewise outstanding as Rayette, not white trash, merely an ignorant innocent.
