I know I said I was going to watch Seven Brides for Seven Brothers next, but Netflix had another idea. Five Easy Pieces was next to leave my instant queue so I figured I better watch it before it leaves. This movie is certainly an interesting choice for the 1001 movie list.
I'm not entirely sure I feel that Five Easy Pieces should be on this list. The movie was described as a character study that essentially takes a look at a gentleman (Jack Nicholson) that has abandoned what could have been a promising career as a concert pianist to work on an oil rig. He is then drawn back home when his father has a stroke and the uncomfortable situations ensue from there. While the premise and story of the movie are very good, there was nothing that seemed to stand out to me that would discern this as being worthy of the 1001 movie list. The only seemingly interesting, heartbreaking and all together appalling moment comes in that last 5 minutes of the film. The performance of Jack Nicholson as Robert Dupea is good, but I can think of a few Nicholson roles that stand out more than this in my opinion (see One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Shining). Scenes that jump out to me are the lunch scene where Robert comes to his then girlfriend, Rayette's defense in front of his family and the breakdown of Dupea in front of his father, reflecting on the failures of his own life.
See this for yourself and leave a comment below. I would be very interested in hearing what others would have to say about this movie.
image accessed on 2/22/2011 from: http://www.smh.com.au/news/FilmFondue/Film-fondue/2005/04/07/1112815665232.html
No comments:
Post a Comment