Five Easy Pieces

Bobby Dupea works on an oil rig and leads a life he himself barely takes seriously. When a family emergency brings him back to the middle-class world he left behind, his inner conflict between his roots and his chosen way of life comes to the fore. The start of a road trip that winds its way through diners, petrol stations and endless, dusty motorways, becoming a portrait of a man who seems alien to everyone, especially himself. Nicholson plays him with a mixture of defiance, weariness and a rage whose origins remain unclear to some and seem familiar to others. The screenplay is by Carole Eastman, who was probably the first to authentically capture on paper what the actor was: a working-class intellectual.
(Otto Römisch)