esrosedotblog

WENT TO PIECES

Today's movie hasn't worn very well for me over time.

Even the parts I remember as just great (the ordering food at the diner)(the two dykes who they pick up)(the whirlaround fuck of Sally Struthers)(playing the piano in the moving truck) don't come off any where near what I have kept in the memory bank.

You know the film. Let's all say it in unison Five Easy Pieces (1970)

Well, we were all trying to get out of our box then and here is little old alienated Bobby who just hitchhikes onto a logging truck at the end and gets out of his.

Well, he does not. He remains a liar, a probable alcoholic, a womanizer, an unrepentant prodigal son and the champion all-star alienation artist; a cop out. He is still fighting Daddy well after the fight was called on a TKO. Daddy is all stroked out.

He is also an expectant father fleeing his support payments.

This is one of those Freudian movies of the 60/70s. Id vs superego.

Nicholson is pretty good I must admit; a no-one angrily going no-where. It is still the young Nicholson. Odd that we just saw the old Nicholson chewing the scenery in that Marine trial picture.

Our own Ralph Waite (Poppa Walton) is the supercilious brother/violinist. We could not understand half of what Karen Black was saying.

I think it is a NYTimes Best 1176 Films because it was in its time. It is not now.

At best a 3 out of Netflix5. I will probably give it a 2. I saw it 35 years after its prime.