In Deep Focus: Five Easy Pieces

Woe is me. How tragic it is that humans must endure existence. How brutal and unforgiving life can be. A cosmic nihilism crushing any objection of, “well there is a reason for everything.” However, as is the design of the meritocratic hierarchies that course through the American idyllic systems, there are those who stand a whisper of a chance to make life manageable, great even, because they benefit from privilege. A real dangerous word to use in 2023, but the crazy thing is, and just give this thought a chance: it turns out privilege has been the very thing directly responsible for generations of those who have and those who have not. An exploration of this phenomenon and the strains of its reality can be found in Five Easy Pieces, Bob Rafelson's 1970 film following Robert "Bobby" Dupea (Jack Nicholson). Now Bobby, as we come to know him, is nothing if not out of place. Uncomfortable so much that he seems hell bent on designing a life meant to import his discomfort on others. At first glance, Bobby seems like the usual underpaid, undervalued blue collar worker, forging ahead through life's many brutalities to make ends meet in hopes that he can make enough cash to get through to the next month. This torment has malformed him into a real bastard. He makes life hell for everyone. Heck, who can blame the dang fella—life has afforded him nothing and so he wages a war against life.

Wait, no, that’s not true. Bobby is misleading the audience. He, in fact, is the prototypical archetype for the privileged American: he’s white, he’s a cis man, he comes from great wealth, and has been brought up in a house that treasures and prioritizes nothing more than intellect and musical mastery. What the audience gleans is that Bobby has in fact chosen the life he leads and has chosen to “abandon” this life of privilege. The discordance he feels however, is that he finds no pleasure in the absence of the life he’s denied. So ingrained are his thoughts of harmony in a world of choice, that he fails to shake off what expectations he has been raised with. The reason he’s always so uncomfortable in scenes is because he can’t quite understand why life can’t just be unbridled pleasure—why a hedonistic pursuit isn't as easy as he’d been promised by the American dream. Where others find fun, joy, and entertainment, he is eternally bored and dissatisfied. Why everything doesn’t go his way, he can’t comprehend. He is so detached from the realities of the world, that he can’t see that he’s really just playacting. His job, his relationship, they're just stand-ins. His idyllic notion of living this “real american” life, detached from his upbringing, is what breeds this discordance: the problem isn’t actually circumstance, it’s him.

In a scene designed to illustrate this central tension, the viewer finds Bobby and his friend Elton heading home after being fired from the umpteenth job. Elton is hammering away a jangly folk tune on his ukelele while Bobby complains about having been labeled “unfit” by the boss who fired them. The two share a bottle of whiskey while Bobby shifts around the driver's seat, each new spot presenting some new knot he can’t quite massage out—eternally uncomfortable. Bobby asks if Elton knows any tunes about women, to which he replies that he does, but he’s too loaded to remember them. It’s the morning and they’re both drunk—a sure fire way to ignore and attempt to satiate the simmering anxiety of misplacement. Then they hit the morning commute traffic, presenting just another thing for Bobby to have to endure. Just another way that life isn’t going “his way.” “Can you believe starting your day off like this, going to work?” Bobby asks, the pain of the thought evident in Nicholson’s delivery. Life, like the traffic, is stretched out ahead of Bobby, just out of view, an unpredictable future that he is already over. It’s almost as if he’s saying, “can you believe we have to wake up each morning?” The traffic, what is otherwise a normal inconvenience, is, for him, some cruel joke being played, another denial of ease.

The camera is behind the front seat and the viewer can’t see traffic either. The viewer doesn’t know what’s in store. “What the hell are these people doing here?” So thrown is he just by others existence: he can’t rip through traffic (move through life) without having to coexist. Then life starts to bark back: a man behind him starts honking. Bobby leans out the window and shouts back at him. Fed up with the racket, Bobby hops out of the car and walks into the slowly moving traffic and addressed the cars behind him, “Why don’t we all line up like a goddamn bunch of ants in the most beautiful part of the day and—” then cut off by actual barking from a dog in a nearby car. Deranged, and obviously drunk, Bobby gnashes his teeth and howls back at the dog, almost having fun in the act. This is Bobby’s magic trick, or what others might pinpoint as what makes him simultaneously unbearable and yet magnetic: the oscillation between being fed up with the world—using this as fuel to inflict that discomfort on others—and also his ability to point and laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Bobby spots a nearby junk truck and climbs into the back of it to get a better view of the traffic; stretched ahead of him are cars as far as the eye can see, blending in with the horizon. So too does life seem to arduously stretch out for Bobby. This is when he notices a piano in the back of the junk truck. Inspired, deranged even, he undresses the piano and starts to play Chopin’s Fantasisie in F minor. The cars behind start honking, not so much at Bobby, but a chorus joining together in a shared frustration. The horribly out of tune piano rings dissonant against the howling ensemble of blaring horns. The effect is maddening. The cacophony builds into a blend of collective misery. Not that Bobby would come to that conclusion, he’s the happiest he’s been in all the scenes prior. He’s totally oblivious to the surroundings anymore. He’s hammering away at the keys like a maniac, the swelling chorus of horns an accompanying orchestra. Elton shouts out to Bobby to coral him back, but Bobby can’t be concerned with the anxieties of others—he’s feeling good, and that’s that. He couldn’t even be present enough to notice that he is actually, in a crude and unlistenable way, in harmony with the others on the road. Life for him is unbearable and he thinks that a unique disposition. But the reality is that he’s in league with everyone else. If only he took a moment to pay the slightest bit of attention to anyone else he might recognize as much, though that’d be too much to ask of him.

Unbeknownst to him, the junk truck begins to merge out of traffic and make its way towards an off ramp. Elton shouts and hollers to warn him, but his voice is easily drowned out by the blaring horns. All is drowned out by Bobby’s self centeredness really. Off Bobby sails, unaware of where he’ll end up, but the audience knows at this point he doesn't care. Heck, he’d probably be excited to just start over and make another go at trudging through existence. Maybe some new town will present less obstacles in the way of… people. Not likely. Thus the tragedy of the privileged not getting what they want. Bobby is doomed to existence because he isn’t an active participant in his life. He recognizes privilege, shuns it, though can’t actually shake it beyond his perceptions of having done so. The answer surely isn’t: taking advantage of privilege = happy happy. Though he might find some liberation from this unhappiness by embracing the truth of his choices and actively participating in the world with the people that inhabit it.