By now, screen narratives from the perspective of men behaving badly have become rather trite, with countless hours of Peak TV devoted to such antiheroes. It’s a testament to Carole Eastman’s writing (under the pseudonym Adrien Joyce) along with Bob Rafelson’s directing and Nicholson’s natural charisma and star power that they’re able to overcome this retroactive fatigue and get the viewer invested in Bobby Dupea’s story in “Five Easy Pieces.”

When we first meet Bobby, he’s in a hard hat on a California oil field, working a blue-collar job instead of nurturing his secret piano talent. He comes home to his long-suffering wife, Rayetta (Karen Black), a waitress who lives the Tammy Wynette song that begins the movie: “Stand by Your Man.” Notably, the first words heard in “Five Easy Pieces” are the lyrics, “Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman.”

Bobby mistreats Rayetta around their bowling buddies and is embarrassed to have her meet his well-to-do family. His restless energy leaves him acting out in unpredictable, sometimes reprehensible ways. Yet aside from Nicholson, the most memorable roles in “Five Easy Pieces” belong to women, including Black, Susan Anspach, Sally Struthers, and Helena Kallianiotes, whose scene-stealing hitchhiker rants about man’s filth, then looks into the camera and says, “I don’t even want to talk about it.”

“Five Easy Pieces” is a character study about a man whose perpetual dissatisfaction leaves him shirking his responsibilities and sabotaging his relationships. Notions of the good life sicken Bobby and he can’t relate to his trailer park friends any more than he can the intellectual vanity of guests at upper-class dinner parties. As he puts it: “I move around a lot, not because I’m looking for anything really, but ’cause I’m getting away from things that get bad if I stay.”