‘What film was and what will never be again’, a phrase used in the latest Turner Classic Movies commercial, is a perfect description of the 1970s, an era when everything seemed possible in the world of the Seventh Art. At that time Hollywood was willing to experiment and invest money, stars and other resources in projects that would seem too ‘artsy’ even to the most refined or snobbish among present-day cinephiles. Many of those experiments failed, but those that didn’t later proved to be among the greatest films of all time, with a quality unsurpassed by later generations. One such film is Badlands, the 1973 drama and directorial debut of Terrence Malick.
The plot of the film is loosely based on the real-life story of young Charles Starkweather and his fifteen-year-old girlfriend Caril-Ann Fugate – a duo of delinquents who terrorised the American Midwest during their short killing spree in 1958 (depicted in the 1993 television docudrama Murder in the Heartland). The protagonist and narrator of the film is Holly Sargis (played by Sissy Spacek), a shy, introspective fifteen-year-old girl who lives with her middle-class father (played by Warren Oates) in a small town in South Dakota. Kit Carruthers (played by Martin Sheen), a school dropout ten years her senior who works as a garbage collector, nevertheless looks like James Dean. That is enough for Holly to fall in love with him and the two start a relationship. Mr. Sturgis is not happy about this and tries to keep them apart, while Kit is equally determined to remain with Holly. The conflict ends with Kit killing Mr. Sturgis, and Holly, after the initial shock, decides to follow her boyfriend during his flight from the law. At first, Kit and Holly try to hide in the woods and build a makeshift home, but their idyll is again interrupted and Kit drives north, towards the badlands of Montana in order to find shelter from the law. Along the way he kills a few more people and the two become instant celebrities and targets of a national manhunt, thus making Kit’s vague goal of escape even less realistic.
Perhaps the main reason for Badlands’ greatness can be found in its ability to allow different viewers to project various interpretations onto the seemingly limited framework of Terrence Malick’s masterpiece. For some viewers Badlands is a metaphor for the ideological emptiness of America, spiritually drained after the Vietnam fiasco and social turmoil of the 1960s. For others, Badlands is a character study that perfectly depicts the phenomenon known as the ‘banality of evil’. Some might see Badlands as an ironic comment on the modern media that turns criminals into instant celebrities. Others might find more universal themes like the loss of innocence, the human relation to mortality, or human insignificance in comparison with the majesty of the universe, perfectly symbolised in the empty but still magnificent plains of Montana, captured by Tak Fujimoto’s photography. All that and more can be found in a mere 95 minutes of Badlands, and this is a film that might provide new insight with each repeated viewing.
Malick shows incredible skill for a novice director, making Badlands a nearly perfect film in which plot, characters and setting play equally important roles. The editing is excellent, allowing the plot to flow naturally from a depiction of teenage romance into a depiction of a crime spree without changing the tone. Another reason for this is the excellent casting. Martin Sheen, whom contemporary audiences know only as an elder statesman in The West Wing, is incredibly convincing as a young punk who desperately tries to find some importance for himself by playing the rebel. His performance is cool and detached, yet chilling, making Kit Carruthers one of the most effective psychopaths in the history of cinema. Sissy Spacek, who was in her mid-20s during production, is equally effective as a 15-year-old girl whose lack of experience, seclusion and fantasy world of movie magazines and pulp fiction leads her to mistake a young psychopath for a kind of romantic hero. Spacek is seemingly passive on screen, but her cool, detached off-screen narration, in which she romanticises the prosaic on-screen reality, provides an ironic contrast.
This acting style perfectly fits Malick’s directorial approach to the story, which is cool and detached. Unlike many Hollywood directors, Malick doesn’t take any moralistic stand – he doesn’t condemn Carruthers as a monster nor does he try to paint him as some kind of anti-establishment hero. Viewers are left to make their own conclusions and assign the meanings they wish. This cold approach can also be found in the rather unusual choice of music. Malick uses 1950s pop songs to give ironic commentary, as well as classic themes by Carl Orff and other composers (making Badlands one of the rare films to use an Orff piece that is not ‘Carmina Burana’).
Perhaps the only flaw in Badlands could be found in comparison with films that came later. A film like this tends to remind us of more contemporary over-hyped garbage like Natural Born Killers and makes us nostalgic for the ‘films that will never be again’.
RATING: 9/10 (++++)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on February 26th 2002)
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Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/3133-badlands?language=en-US Critic: AAA
