BADLANDS
Directed by Terrence Malick
Written by Terrence Malick
Released in 1973
Directed by Terrence Malick
Written by Terrence Malick
Released in 1973
The word means any hard-traveling, eroded and desolate expanse of land where most people wouldn't want to live and where those who do find escape to be difficult. Badlands shift across New Zealand, Spain, Argentina, Canada and the United States. Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate (who knew something about being shifty) found badlands in Nebraska and Wyoming, just as James Dean would have done had he been a psycho killer instead of a movie star. Bruce Springsteen (who might have pumped gas or been a psycho killer if he hadn't been one of the voices of his generation) told their story.
I saw her standing on her front lawn
Just a-twirling her baton.
Me and her went for a ride, sir
And ten innocent people died.
From the town of Lincoln, Nebraska
With a sawed-off .410 on my lap
Through the badlands of Wyoming
I killed everything in my path.
In this country, we have badlands in North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico and in certain regions of the human heart. I'd rather be strapped to a Death Valley Saguaro with coyote love-juice dripping off my face for as long as it took those paranoid canines to devour me than to spend five minutes sitting in a car with some blanked-out coif-haired Lucky Strike smoking sociopath such as the one Martin Sheen plays in the movie writer-producer-director Terrence Malick created for his debut Badlands (1973).
As a kid, Malick had seen his share of badland oil fields. That was before his family moved to Austin, a more civilized environment that prepared him for time in Philosophy at Harvard and as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. By the late Sixties he had begun doctoring scripts for Drive, He Said and Dirty Harry. His then-wife, Jill Jakes, had worked for Arthur Penn, the man who directed Bonnie and Clyde.
Badlands does not move at the Foggy Mountain Breakdown pace of Penn's film. But it does breathe in some of the same heartless dust of the natural scenery. And while Sheen's character Kit and co-star Sissy Spacek's Holly exude none of the Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway sexuality, they do evoke a sense of being archaic vessels, spilled from separate sacks and tossed together on a whim, neither capable of manifesting their combustion without the presence of the other.
An old Sicilian expression has it that fate will guide you by the hands; if you resist, it will drag you by the ankles.
Kit and Holly do not resist.
By the time they meet, he is twenty-five and she is fifteen. Neither can understand the numbness that defines their existence. She didn't appreciate it that her father shot her dog and he thinks it's inappropriate for people to litter. Beyond this, they have no moral imperatives. Or as that bloated singing sociopath Jim Morrison used to say it, "The future's uncertain and the end is always near."
The two main characters do not so much contrast with the scenery as they are amplified by it. Malick celebrates the power of the landscape with his abundant use of natural lighting. You would have to go back to the early work of Jean-Luc Godard to find a director so intent on letting real light work to his advantage.
The Badlands themselves really are the story. Malick does not club us over the head with plot. We know right away that Kit will fry for his crimes and that Holly won't--after all, she does the limited and deliberately stilted narrating. The point of the movie is the way all involved so decently capture that moment in time when mass murderers were just coming into vogue because the distinction between the artificial and the real had become less pronounced as technology brought us all closer together. Kit and Holly were the last hold-outs. Holly regurgitate's her boyfriend's rationalizations with a stoicism that is plain eerey. "Kit says it's all right to shoot bounty hunters in the back because they're only doing it for the money. Lawmen should get more respect because at least they are doing a job."
Kit does fancy himself something of a role model. Inside the house of one of his victim's he records for posterity some fatherly advice: "Listen to your parents and teachers. They got a line on most things, so don't treat 'em like enemies. There's always an outside chance you can learn something. Try to keep an open mind. Try to understand the viewpoints of others. Consider the minority opinion. But try to get along with the majority of opinion once it's accepted."
I saw her standing on her front lawn
Just a-twirling her baton.
Me and her went for a ride, sir
And ten innocent people died.
From the town of Lincoln, Nebraska
With a sawed-off .410 on my lap
Through the badlands of Wyoming
I killed everything in my path.
In this country, we have badlands in North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico and in certain regions of the human heart. I'd rather be strapped to a Death Valley Saguaro with coyote love-juice dripping off my face for as long as it took those paranoid canines to devour me than to spend five minutes sitting in a car with some blanked-out coif-haired Lucky Strike smoking sociopath such as the one Martin Sheen plays in the movie writer-producer-director Terrence Malick created for his debut Badlands (1973).
As a kid, Malick had seen his share of badland oil fields. That was before his family moved to Austin, a more civilized environment that prepared him for time in Philosophy at Harvard and as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. By the late Sixties he had begun doctoring scripts for Drive, He Said and Dirty Harry. His then-wife, Jill Jakes, had worked for Arthur Penn, the man who directed Bonnie and Clyde.
Badlands does not move at the Foggy Mountain Breakdown pace of Penn's film. But it does breathe in some of the same heartless dust of the natural scenery. And while Sheen's character Kit and co-star Sissy Spacek's Holly exude none of the Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway sexuality, they do evoke a sense of being archaic vessels, spilled from separate sacks and tossed together on a whim, neither capable of manifesting their combustion without the presence of the other.
An old Sicilian expression has it that fate will guide you by the hands; if you resist, it will drag you by the ankles.
Kit and Holly do not resist.
By the time they meet, he is twenty-five and she is fifteen. Neither can understand the numbness that defines their existence. She didn't appreciate it that her father shot her dog and he thinks it's inappropriate for people to litter. Beyond this, they have no moral imperatives. Or as that bloated singing sociopath Jim Morrison used to say it, "The future's uncertain and the end is always near."
The two main characters do not so much contrast with the scenery as they are amplified by it. Malick celebrates the power of the landscape with his abundant use of natural lighting. You would have to go back to the early work of Jean-Luc Godard to find a director so intent on letting real light work to his advantage.
The Badlands themselves really are the story. Malick does not club us over the head with plot. We know right away that Kit will fry for his crimes and that Holly won't--after all, she does the limited and deliberately stilted narrating. The point of the movie is the way all involved so decently capture that moment in time when mass murderers were just coming into vogue because the distinction between the artificial and the real had become less pronounced as technology brought us all closer together. Kit and Holly were the last hold-outs. Holly regurgitate's her boyfriend's rationalizations with a stoicism that is plain eerey. "Kit says it's all right to shoot bounty hunters in the back because they're only doing it for the money. Lawmen should get more respect because at least they are doing a job."
Kit does fancy himself something of a role model. Inside the house of one of his victim's he records for posterity some fatherly advice: "Listen to your parents and teachers. They got a line on most things, so don't treat 'em like enemies. There's always an outside chance you can learn something. Try to keep an open mind. Try to understand the viewpoints of others. Consider the minority opinion. But try to get along with the majority of opinion once it's accepted."
