9º – Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson, 1970)
We will follow the daily life of a young man belonging to an upper class family who decided to leave everything behind and live a common life. His anxieties, dilemmas, his exacerbated model of dealing with the human apparatus, his friendships, his turbulent relationship with his girlfriend and his vision of work are distinguished by the film during the 98 minutes of projection. The pearl of the year 1970, ‘Five Easy Pieces’ explains how each subject has his own very evident subjective layer which prevents that traditional view of life from being unique and unalterable. The work also exposes the existential dramas of a man completely aimless in the world, and who suffers from this lack of meaning. His daring end, without ceasing to work with all the aura of softness governed throughout the rest of the work, crown and makes this option come very close to the nickname of masterpiece. Oh, and as if that wasn’t enough, we still have Jack Nicholson as a protagonist in a touching and extremely visceral performance.
8º – Night Moves (Arthur Penn, 1975)
A private investigator is hired by a woman whose adolescent daughter had disappeared, having to insert herself into the mysterious meanderings of the girl’s disappearance. The film gains its substance when the man begins to face, as the investigation progresses, a degeneration of all the apparatuses of his life, with his wife betraying him, his turbulent past returning to the surface and his day to day more and more empty. An underestimated masterpiece of the 1970s, ‘Night Moves’ is a film that impresses with the rigor of its unretouchable script, Arthur Penn’s productive direction and Gene Hackman’s powerful performance, working to investigate the dead end that is the life of a middle-aged man.
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