Every time I hear the title Badlands, I can't help but think of the Bruce Springsteen song (from 1978) with the same title. This is what happens when you spend too much time listening to AOR stations during the late 1970s.
Springsteen would a few years later make a acoustic album titled "Nebraska", which began with a chilling song about Charles Starkweather. Springsteen, as Starkweather, expressed a wish to face the electric chair with his girlfriend sitting in his lap.
Springsteen probably had the heartless nature of Starkweather down pat. Badlands director Terrence Malick instead sees him as a trigger happy but otherwise sympathetic anti-hero with a deadpan, ironic, eccentric sense of humor.
While the character names have been changed, Badlands is clearly based upon the 1958 Starkweather-Fugate murder spree. Assumedly because "Flatlands" doesn't make for a good film title, the state was changed from Nebraska to South Dakota.
Starkweather is here called Kit Carruthers (Martin Sheen), while Sissy Spacek in an early film role plays Caril Fugate as Holly Sargis. Spacek, who in 1981 would win a Best Actress Oscar for playing Loretta Lynn as a young teenager, is also convincing here playing a fifteen year old. Spacek was in her mid-twenties by 1973, but looked younger due to her freckles and unusual facial structure.
The biggest problem that Badlands faces is in the credibility of the lead characters. Kit is a likable no-account who chooses to murder, rather than face the inconvenient consequences of his previous actions. Holly is his 'innocent' and naive jailbait girlfriend, who blithely sticks with him because she thinks he loves her. This, despite his rarely showing any affection for her. She seems to be more of a buddy than a lover, with their one conversation about sex concerning what a letdown it actually was.
In contrast, the real Starkweather was a stupid and vicious killer. In the film, the deaf maid and the wealthy businessmen are spared. (That's Terrence Malick himself as the man who comes to the door.) In real life, they were both killed, along with the businessman's wife. Starkweather also murdered a two year old girl who was Fugate's step-sister. Fugate's mother was also murdered, with the body dumped head first into an outhouse toilet. Starkweather also sexually mutilated one of victims, a sixteen year old girl.
In the film, Holly is given probation. Her real life counterpart Caril Fugate was convicted of murder, escaping the electric chair only because she was a minor. She spent the next eighteen years in prison.
First time director Terrence Malick has heavily romanticized the killer lovers in Badlands, almost to the point where they are good people who do bad things. Of course, Hollywood has glamorized crime since at least Public Enemy from 1931, although at least back then they opened the film with a disclaimer.
1973 was a banner year for Hollywood films depicting lovers on the run, with Badlands competing with Thieves Like Us and Steven Spielberg's feature debut, The Sugarland Express.
Although similarly themed Bonnie and Clyde (1967) had much greater commercial and critical success, Badlands is nearly as famous today. This, despite being outnumbered in Oscar nominations by nine to none. The difference is that Bonnie and Clyde director Arthur Penn has become fairly obscure over the years, while Malick's status has risen considerably.
Malick's next project was Days of Heaven (1978), an outstanding film that made exceptional use of cinematography. Twenty years passed before Malick's next and greatest film, The Thin Red Line. Like his previous two films, the story was set in the past, relied heavily on voice-overs, and had excellent cinematography.
One difference between Badlands and Malick's later, superior films is in the budget. While Malick seemingly had the pick of Hollywood for The Thin Red Line, Badlands was made for a mere half million dollars. Sheen is competent, but too jaded for a James Dean prototype (Dean was actually sensitive in his performances), and too ironic for a merciless serial killer.
Malick also seems to have learned something about storytelling over the years. The story can be quite muddled in Badlands. Kit quickly builds an elaborate, survivalist treehouse in the woods as in Swiss Family Robinson, demonstrating skills that an unemployed garbageman presumably wouldn't have. Kit takes pains to cut a record containing his confessions, then burns the house down which assumedly will destroy the record. But then again the real-life Starkweather was equally stupid, repeatedly returning to the scene of his crimes.
While Badlands is a competent film, it has become over-rated over the years, perhaps due to the Malick mystique and the popularity of its lurid genre. (59/100)
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