The plot follows a twenty-five year old garbage collector, Kit, played by Martin Sheen. Kit begins to have an affair with fifteen year old girl, Holly, played by Sissey Spacek. Their union is kept a secret from Holly’s father who wouldn’t approve of her seeing Kit, upon his discovery of their relationship Kit confronts and murders Holly’s father in cold blood. Kit and Holly end up on the run from the law, and many more bodies fall as Kit rampages towards the Badlands on their way to the Canadian border. As the beginning of Malick’s career this in many respects establishes the style of cinema he would eventually forge. That’s not to say that this is anything like his latest film The New World, but all four of his films do share certain commonalities. Badlands is a period piece set in the 1950’s, none of Malick’s works take place in the present; Badlands is the closest to the present at just two decades past, and The New World is the furthest reaching back to the beginning of European expansion to North America and adventure of Captain John Smith. The visual style is also set up here, often shooting in natural light many scenes taking place in the “magic hour” which comprises of the two times a day when the sun is about to set or rise, this gives the scenes a majestic aura combining long shadows and gentle orange tints, along with of course the effortlessly cinematic sun set or sun rise around the vastness of the North American wilderness. This particular technique would be taken even further in Days of Heaven which is almost entirely shot in the magic hour. All four of Malick’s films feature narration in the form of a character or later many characters within the story, in Badlands and Days of Heaven this is taken from the perspective of the innocent involved, in this case Holly. A central character who is an innocent is a recurrent theme throughout Malick’s work. Within Badlands this innocent is in a situation which is over her head, something that she can barely comprehend. Malick has stated that influence for this came from novels like Tom Sawyer and Swiss Family Robinson. There is also the beginning of Malick's preferred themes and explorations: the abuse of nature and the mythic quality of American history. But before examining these elements in any further detail lets look at what makes Badlands unique in Malick’s work and indeed the films made at the time. Firstly the violence, this is easily the most violent of Malick’s films, that’s not to say it has the highest body count, but it is the most explicit, cruel and detached. Kit executes Holly’s father first; after hiding in the woods they are discovered and bounty hunters are sent in to kill them. Kit shoots all three in the back, they don’t stand a chance and Kit shows them no mercy, but Kit has his own bizarre moral code; he has no hesitation in killing the bounty hunters because they were there the money and would play is “as down an dirty as they could” if they’d been lawmen it would have been a different matter, they were just there to get a job done. Later Kit shoots a friend of his in the stomach because he thought he was going to tell the police about him and Holly and in the most disturbing scene in the film he asks Holly to go speak to him, comfort him, whilst he dies. All Holly can manage to ask is about the spider he keeps as a pet. This is neither cruel nor malicious but rather cold. This is a child’s curiosity, lacking a child’s humanity. Malick’s slows the film at this point to force the audience to experience Holly and Kit’s bored detachment. The whole scene is unnerving and horrific. After this incident he locks up a couple in a hurricane shelter so that he and Holly can make a get away. Before they leave he fires two bullets into the wooden doors for no obvious reason; he casually asks Holly afterwards: “You think I got ‘em?” Despite this, later when Kit is in a similar situation with the owner of a house they’ve been staying in and a deaf maid, he doesn’t fire any shots but instead shows mercy by letting them live. His morality is perplexing and perceptively inconsistent he plays up on the fact that he looks like James Dean the original rebel without a cause but when he speaks into the opulent house owners Dictaphone he says 'Consider the minority opinion, but try to get along with the majority opinion once it's accepted', this is no rebel. He is not Brando in The Wild One rebelling against whatever there is. He lets a rich man live but kills poor men, he wants to live the American Dream, he wants to fit in but he cannot. His opinions and his actions are equally inconsistent, at one point he becomes visibly irritated at the media for villianising him and Holly, then later on he takes full advantage of his celebrity and notoriety. What drives Kit and Holly to do what they do? Why does Kit kill? Why doesn’t Holly leave him? She’s not afraid of him, so why not get out when she has the chance? Or perhaps that is the answer to the question in itself. This is all part of the riddle of Badlands; inspired in many respects by Bonnie and Clyde’s 1930’s crime spree, and the 1967 Arthur Penn feature about their lives. It was also loosely based on the real-life murder spree of Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate in 1957. Bonnie and Clyde may well have influenced the Badlands but Badland’s own influence can be seen in many films since, including True Romance (where Hans Zimmer reproduces its score and voice over style from Badlands) and Natural Born Killers which is of course in many respects deeply tied to True Romance. But more than these other examples Badlands also ties into the American culture of the rebellious youth. The frequent references to James Dean is a signifier of this. Kit and Holly are searching for their own unique identity; Hannah Patterson states in her essay: Two Characters in Search of Direction: Motivation and the Construction of Identity in Badlands, that: “The title ‘Badlands’ has appeared on the screen as Kit walks towards her, evoking Holly’s prophetic voice-over, directly insinuating him in the subsequent shift of location and also the shift which will take place within Holly through her association with him. Later in the film we will witness the consequences of this as her identity begins to alter. She becomes very interested in attempting different ways of looking: in the forest she tries on make-up and later she puts curlers in her hair. She also begins to smoke – an action she performs in her father’s house – displaying a blatant disregard for authority/convention.” Not just identity, but also for adventure, an escape from the mundane and routine of the ordinary life. Patterson also states: “Kit appears the more dominating; he is an opportunist, as he himself states, ‘I’ll try anything once’. His actions in the rest of the film stand as testament to the truth of this statement. Although he never at any juncture forces her to follow him, it is by trying anything once – and in fact more than once – that he will lead them both into trouble.” But there is a darker ironic turn in the tale for Holly and Kit, and consciously they wish to rebel against social confines and acceptable behaviour, but subconsciously they appear to do the exact opposite; Neil Campbell in his essay: The Highway Kind: Badlands, Youth, Space and the Road, states that: “Contrary to the assumed traditions of youth and road movies as subversive texts, Kit’s actions can be read as his quest for conformity and responsibility rather than as a counter-cultural rebel, for what he desires, above all, is a return to some ideal lost time of manners, respect and honesty. In fact many youth texts have concerned themselves with rediscovering forms of stability, authenticity and values perceived as lost in the ‘phoney’ adult world, as in The Catcher in the Rye, Rebel Without a Cause and The Outsiders.” Campbell clarifies this contradiction in the mythos of the rebel: “The impossibility of fulfilling myths that assert mobility and settlement, freedom and restraint, individualism and conformity. Ultimately, in these joyless, brutally cold lives, youth rebellion on the road goes nowhere and offers nothing, for any hopeful spaces are temporary and transitory at best and seem only to lead back to where the social codes of normalisation and discipline wait to reclaim the highway kind.”
“The emptiness of the characters’ lives, their emotionless reaction to death and violence, their overall detachment from events, and the casual indifference with which they face the future are matched by their physical surroundings. The general emptiness of the streets and towns, the expansive barren landscapes through which they travel and the vacant roads, as if existing only for their use, act as metaphors for separation and for the absence of any structure for the nurturing or sustaining of a human community and its individual members.” Malick’s visual nuance throughout the film reminds the viewer of eerie fairytale. A children’s story. Holly says wistfully at one point "Sometimes I wished I could fall asleep and be taken off to some magical land, but this never happened." The audience feel she has been taken to some magical land. Moments early in the film in their idyllic tree house hideaway, later in the film in barren wastelands of the dying American West. The abuse of nature and Mankind’s influence in world of wildlife is one of Malick’s reoccurring themes, and here it is also present. Early on in the story when Holly’s father discovers her affair with Kit he executes her dog as a punishment, even earlier than this Holly throws her sick fish out of its water, leaving it to die, an action she regrets which plays on her conscience. Kit stands on a dead cow at one point as if it were a rock or log of wood, something inanimate with no meaning. This disregard for nature, and domestic or farm animals then extends to Kit’s murders. He shoots Holly’s father, as causally as he’d shot Holly’s dog. It all builds to a total dismissal of life, it is neither sacred nor precious, it is disposable and can be discarded like a piece of rubbish. This is one aspect of the film which is more relevant today than it was during it production, the detachment and dismissal of violence, it’s interesting that this is a film which in no way glorifies its violence or action (which with the exception of the films climatic car chase has little to no enjoyment to be taken from it) despite this it indirectly makes a very clear comment on the culture; it also hints at the amorality of celebrity idolatry, a concept our decade has embraced with both arms! People frequently comment on Kit’s appearance, comparing him to James Dean, Kit clearly revels in this compliment and enjoys his rebellious persona. His persona over takes him, during the aforementioned car chase Kit even checks his hair in the rear view mirror, after all, a celebrity criminal has always got to look good for his audience, the audience being whoever maybe watching. Whether his celebrity informs Kit’s continuing spree of violence is unknown but it would be easy to justify such an interpretation, his actions in the films last act seem to indicate a want to cash in on this reputation he’s gathers, that if Kit continues to get away with it, how will he ever prove his superiority to the rest of society. But there are any number of interpretations which can be taken from the last act, and this is but one. This is one of the best films of the 1970’s, which given the calibre of that particular decade is very high praise. Malick is often considered to be such an aloof director, more concerned with the visuals than the performances or the story it is quite refreshing to consider how well directed the performances are. It cannot be underestimated what immense contribution Martin Sheen, and Sissy Spacek made to this film. Sheen was never better than in this film, Sissy Spacek turns in one of the finest performances of teenager in all American Cinema, she is a complete innocent with a burgeoning sense of maturity. She is so subtle, with a voice over of depth and poetry. A special mention must go to the great Warren Oates as Holly’s father. Oates, a Sam Peckinpah favourite, gives such a complex performance it is shame to see him killed so early. Badlands, although not my personal favourite of Terrance Malick’s films, can be and is argued to be his best work by many viewers. In terms of content it is the most focused on narrative of all four of his films, and is more up tempo than his later works, as with Days of Heaven it is also a very quick film at just ninety minutes. Badlands is also the most humorous of all of Malick’s work, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, and The New World are all deadly serious from first to last with very rare instances of humour, in September 2008’s issue of Sight and Sound David Thomson made a point of this matter stating that: “I had not noticed until my most recent viewing how far Badlands is poised on the edge of being a comedy.” It’s an interesting point, as Kit’s bizarre sense of humour pervades Badlands, and serves to intensify the drama. The final line of the film, which I shan’t reveal for fear of spoiling the films climax, is a hilarious moment which ends the film with a smile of amusement rather than a look of horror, and perhaps this blending of horrific actions and witty one-liners is what makes Badlands unique. Malick makes you empathise with characters who commit heinous crimes, which in tern leaves you pondering the characters choices and actions for far longer after it’s concluded. Quick note for this episode. The majority of quotations were taken from The Cinema of Terrence Malick, and excellent series of essays published by Wallflower and edited by Hannah Patterson. M. Dawson |
|||
Something of an enigma within the breadth of excellent directors across the globe, even Andrei Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman, and Krzysztof Kieslowski made a few lacklustre features, where as Malick has made four films, and in my personal opinion, four masterpieces. He has a perfect filmography which it can be argued is in part due to his unprolific nature, after his second film Days of Heaven in 1978 Malick disappeared from cinema for the 1980’s and most of the 1990’s to return with his war movie The Thin Red Line in 1998. Such massive gaps between his work have meant Malick has managed to pick the projects he wants to write and direct very carefully, and unlike other directors with a singularly perfect filmography like Charles Loughton or Jean Vigo, Malick has matched the high standard of his content through four and soon to be five films not just one feature and a small number of short films. Malick comes to cinema from a very different background to most of his contemporaries, while Scorsese, Coppola and Spielberg were toiling away in Film school, Malick was philosophy lecturer at MIT before getting involved at the American film institute. This intellectual philosophical background informs his films from the first frame to the last. There is a questing nature to all four of his features, which do not morally judge the characters contained within. This amorality is present in philosophy of Hobbes and Nietzsche, and can be most definitely felt within Badlands.
Like its protagonists, Badlands is also cold and detached in its style, there is no music to punctuate moments of extreme violence, or to cue us ready when we should be feeling horror at the executions we witness. Instead when music is used it is a contrastingly sweet and romantic score, with an innocent undertone that stands in direct opposition to the content and helps to confuse our understanding of events. Although it is detached it doesn’t stop Badlands from being beautifully shot, the stunning landscapes are put to full use with absolutely breathtaking cinematography from first images to the final jaw-dropping aerial shot, this is one area that Malick would definitely improve upon, but his visual splendour was there to be seen right from the start. The barren emptiness of the locations in some respects reflect the characters internal landscapes; Ron Mottram states in his essay: All Things Shining: The Struggle for Wholeness, Redemption and Transcendence in the Films of Terrance Malick, that:
Post new comment