Author’s Note: This review is part of a write-off covering Terrence Malick’s Badlands—a film that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention here at Epinions. Wokelstein organized this meeting of the minds, so be sure to check out his, and the following reviewer’s pieces once you’re done here: Grouch, ZentropaJK, Mangiotto, and MisterOrange.
1950’s America, a time period often referred to as the last days of this nation’s innocence. A simpler time, where the rebellion of the 1960’s and the horror of Vietnam were distant blips on the cultural horizon. All in all, one of the most highly romanticized periods of American history. Yet, while the 1950’s were certainly a quieter time, they weren’t quite as safe and perfect as hindsight would have us believe. In 1958, Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate took the Nebraska highways and embarked on a killing spree that would allow them to live on forever in infamy. Starkweather would kill 11 people by the time he was finally captured—a twisted murderer wandering the flat plains of the Nebraska countryside killing any man, woman, or child who got in his way. You wouldn’t think that such disturbing subject matter could be worked into a romanticized coming of age story, but that’s just what director Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line) has done with his 1973 film Badlands.
Badlands isn’t a docudrama, of course—instead of having Starkweather and Fugate as the leads, Malick makes the wise choice to create two characters of his own for his tale. Still, it’s safe to say that Kit Carruthers (Martin Sheen) and Holly Sargis (Sissy Spacek) are clearly inspired by the real life mass murderers.
At it’s core, Badlands is another ‘couple on the run’ film, much like 1968’s Bonnie and Clyde or Spielberg’s Sugarland Express. It’s a simple tale, about a young man without many prospects for the future who becomes infatuated with an underage girl. When Holly’s father objects to their relationship, Kit kills the man in cold blood—and rather than face up to what he’s done, the two go on the run…continually killing anyone who Kit thinks might turn them in.
Of course, the story isn’t what makes the film so interesting—at least not directly. No, it’s Malick’s mesmerizing cinematography (he fired no less than two cinematographers during the making of the film) and the slow and methodical pace with which the film unfolds that makes it so intriguing. For a film about fugitives on the run, Badlands moves along at a pace that can only be described as leisurely, hinting at just how life was back in those days.
Direction-wise, Malick fills the film with one impressive shot after another—each one capturing the essence of life in Middle America. Rather than have his anti-heroes run across the great plains, he moves the story north, sending Kit and Holly on a quest to reach Canada, taking them across the badlands of Montana. Here, Malick’s camera showcases the desolate beauty of one of America’s last wild frontiers. Majestic wide-angle shots highlight just how open and empty the spaces are here—sort of a visual metaphor for emptiness inherent in his two main characters.
Generally, I’m not a fan of films that utilize a lot of voice-over narration. To my thinking, it often seems like cheating—a cheap way for a screenwriter to get his point across by using a character to tell the audience something they should be getting through the action. However, here, Malick’s decision to give Sissy Spacek long narrative voice-overs actually works. The dialogue is good—Holly speaks like a 15-year-old girl, fascinated by movie stars and being famous, and maybe in love with a man just because he’s paid her some attention…despite that fact that he’s a cold-blooded killer.
The performances of Sheen and Spacek are just as impressive as the work done by Malick behind the camera and on the script. Kit is an interesting dichotomy—the rebel without a clue, all James Dean good looks, but no idea how to function in the real world. He’s a sociopath, of this there can be little doubt, abnd he's got a strangely skewed set of values, witnessed not only through the fact that he’s a killer, but also through his relationship with Holly. There’s a distance between him and the woman he professes to care so much about. Holly is perhaps the more frightening of the two, though—this young woman doesn’t even react when her boyfriend shoots her father right in front of her. It’s almost as if she’s dead inside—yet another personification of the banality of evil. I’m not sure Malick intended for Kit and Holly to be examined in this light, after all, the film was made nearly thirty years ago, in a different time entirely, but viewing the film in today’s context, it’s still easy to buy into the romanticized story of young lovers on the run (at least partially because Sheen’s so nice when he’s not killing people), but these other things do seem to surface as well. Also, observant film fans will catch Terrence Malick himself in an uncredited part as the man who comes to the door and talks to Kit while they’re holding the rich man and his deaf maid hostage.
Historically speaking, the film seems to have had quite an influence on none other than Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino wrote the script for Tony Scott’s True Romance as well as worked on the script for Natural Born Killers--both films that featured young lovers on the lam from the law after committing murder. True Romance is clearly the homage piece, with Patricia Arquette coming across as a more grown up Holly (she even sounds a lot like Spacek during the voice-over segments of the film), and going as far as to feature the Carl Orff musical piece that figures so prominently into Badlands during the final scene and end credits of that film. NBK, on the other hand, is essentially the 1990’s style update—with more violence, more aggression, and Oliver Stone’s unique brand of social commentary.
At any rate, Badlands is a solidly constructed film that’s aged rather well over the last 25 years. Spacek and Sheen’s performances are intriguing, Terrrence Malick’s direction is fabulous (particularly for a first time filmmaker), and the film has a languid pace that essentially belies the urgency of the main character’s situation, Badlands is a monument to good filmmaking—and a gentle reminder that the 1950’s weren’t as innocent and pure a time as we’d like to think.
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