Saw Five Easy Pieces, a fairly depressing film. It stars Jack Nicholson as an oil worker who's sleeping with this heavily made up woman whom he toys with emotionally. We open on Jack coming home. She wants to sing him a song but he covers his ears smilingly. She asks him if he loves her and, after pausing a while, he says "why don't you sing?" "Now I don't feel like it." And he smiles smugly and reclines saying "I know." This man is an asshole. She's maybe needy and overbearing and obnoxious but first of all I can't blame her if he needles her insecurities like that and second of all he should in that case dump her and move on instead of stringing along this abusive relationship. Alas this film was made in the 70s so buckle up.
We get to know this dude and discover that he's from a wealthy family of concert musicians. He goes to his family home to visit his sick father, girlfriend in tow, and insults and belittles everyone around him. The revelation of the rich family is supposed to make him romantic and mysterious. Why did he leave? What riches did he seek, beyond the material, this wayward musician? Well, apparently he sought a woman he could manipulate and a life of frustration. The dude is a coward, afraid of showing any kind of weakness and the film tries to trick us into mistaking his cowardice for romantic, manly stoicism.
There are a lot of films from the 70s that annoy me on a personal level, the way (I guess) that good art ought to. I'm probably just a small man mistaking a noble spirit for a tough guise. Maybe this is just a man who is unwilling to subjugate himself for anyone. There's poetry to unpack here but I sure wish the movie wasn't so shitty to women. Every single woman is sneered at by some character in the film. This guy who we're supposed to worship has serious flaws as well. On the imdb boards someone has posted "Anybody else felt like [Jack Nicholson's character]?" Yes of course, Zader82. Don't we all?
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