Well, here I go again, picking the film from a director's body of work that feels like their most commercial output, and the least representative of their style. Then again, Terrence Malick isn't a director whose films I've particularly enjoyed over the years. I respect his deeply spiritual writing and penchant for spectacular cinematography, but without strong characters or story, my attention tends to drift. So is it any wonder that the Malick film I'm on the best terms with has his most straightforward storytelling?
There are many movies about couples on the run, but Holly and Kit are an unusually memorable pair. Played by Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek at the start of their careers, they're a young reprobate and a sheltered teenage girl, who fall in love and quickly decide that they'll do anything to be together, including kill people. "Badlands" is loosely based on the crime spree of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, but it's better understood as one of the many similar crime films that was made after the runaway success of "Bonnie and Clyde." Instead of the Depression Era, "Badlands" takes place in the 1950s, mostly in the upper midwestern states. It's less interested in the crimes than in the rebellion, following the young miscreants into the South Dakota badlands, where they evade the law and play at living in a state of nature.
"Badlands" was Malick's first film, an independent feature made with very little money. The production was notoriously troubled, badly managed to the point where most of the crew quit before the film was completed. Three different cinematographers ended up being credited. However, "Badlands" was where Malick established several of the working relationships that would carry through his entire career. And the end result shows that he already had a very clear and specific approach to filmmaking. Told from Holly's perspective, "Badlands" has a dreamlike, poetic quality that would recur in Malick's films again and again. However, "Badlands" is unique in the way that it captures Holly's very specific, immature voice and outlook. She falls for Kit because she thinks he looks like James Dean, and he's happy to indulge her adolescent fantasy of escaping from her stifling small town existence. Her narration is full of little mundanities and romantic aspirations. And every time he kills someone, she makes excuses and looks the other way.
Of course, Kit isn't James Dean but a troubled young man with a taste for thoughtless violence. He's so detached when shooting people, it's as if he's playacting a part, and is slow to appreciate the consequences of his actions. At times he seems younger than Holly, despite being ten years her senior. His initial scenes with her are genuinely charming, and we don't question for a second why she wants him. He's also a creature of youthful fantasy, nonchalantly claiming that he always wanted to be a criminal, but displaying no understanding of what that means. Kit truly believes that he can outrun and outgun anything that stands in his path, self-mythologizing every step of the way. There's a terrible poignancy to his unwavering self-confidence.
Terence Malick retreated from the limelight after the completion of his second film, "Days of Heaven," and became something of a cult figure after he reappeared twenty years later to direct "The Thin Red Line." His filmmaking has become more and more experimental with time, delivering staggeringly beautiful images that I wish I enjoyed more. I've dutifully watched every single film Malick has directed, and his work is exquisite, but I rarely find it moving. "The Tree of Life," for instance, is an intimate, personal reverie on childhood that I was entranced with one moment, and completely out of sync with the next.
And I don't know how much I would have enjoyed "Badlands" if it weren't for the work of Sheen and especially Spacek, who is one of my favorite actresses. The leads of Malick's other films often feel like they're all interiority, so ungrounded from reality that they barely feel like people. Kit and Holly, however, are very much beholden to the real world, and that's their ultimate tragedy.
What I've Seen - Terrence Malick
Badlands (1973)
Days of Heaven (1978)
The Thin Red Line (1998)
The New World (2005)
The Tree of Life (2011)
To the Wonder (2012)
Knight of Cups (2015)
Voyage of Time (2016)
Song to Song (2017)
A Hidden Life (2019)
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