BadlandsWhy do girls always fall for guys that're no good for them? Take Holly (Sissy Spacek): she's a young girl of fifteen living with her father in a small town in South Dakota, practicing twirling the baton and studying Spanish. One day, she is approached by Kit Carruthers (Martin Sheen)--rhymes with "druthers"--a garbage man, a cowboy, a James Dean simulacrum, a young man of twenty-five who takes a shine to Holly. Kit takes Holly out behind her daddy's back. They go for rides in his car, kiss beneath the bleachers, and he teaches her how to smoke. Holly's father (Warren Oates), a sign painter, does not approve of Holly's new beau, and tells Kit so; Kit's reaction is as unorthodox as it is deadly.
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Badlands follows Holly and Kit on their escape from the law, from the tedium of everyday life, across the Midwest, from their forest bungalow to a long trek across the great plains, into the badlands of Montana in a stolen Cadillac. Their romance might be some kind of shade of a "Bonnie and Clyde" affair, but a mimicry where Kit's lack of a compass--both physical and moral--set them both adrift, where even reckless love can't keep them afloat. Holly narrates the tale of her tethered days with her sociopath boyfriend, as if writing everything down in a private diary. Her narration is essential, as Holly does not always confess her true feelings and thoughts to Kit, a sign that underscores her inherent lack of trust toward the man who killed her father in cold blood and burned her house down to cover up the crime. It might be argued that Holly is simply not strong enough to run from Kit, but it should not be forgotten that Kit's seduction of her is a kind of abuse that is but the beginning of his criminal enterprise, and that she is torn between her passion for the renegade hotshot and her struggle to cope after her life has been uprooted. While Kit relishes the idea of being something more than a garbage man, a farm hand (he tells Holly he is a "cowboy"), he is no criminal mastermind. When he finally feels the thrill that comes with being wanted--he needs to be wanted--then does he start to build his confidence, arming traps in the woods for their secret fort, dictating his deeper thoughts into a recorder, hoping that future generations will prosper from his platitudes. Kit is wildly inconsistent in his ideology, proclaiming the house of his ex-coworker from his garbage days as being "full of junk", but compulsively collecting junk at every turn, never sure if he might need it. "Junk" is something of a hobby for Kit, so it's no surprise our first introduction to him is him picking through garbage looking for salvageables...or maybe just trying to understand a little bit about other people...or maybe he is just a bit too unhinged, take your pick.
Kit claims he wants to be with Holly, but he really wants fame. Holly claims to want to be with Kit, but she just wants to go home, and wants her father alive again. The flame dies out on the plains of Montana, as they dance to Nat King Cole's "A Blossom Fell", as Holly recalls that she just stopped paying attention to Kit, talking about how she would write whole sentences on the roof of her mouth with her tongue out of boredom. This reflection is not the first moment of her sense that their young love is failing, though we can't help but wonder why it took her so long to reach this conclusion. No, Kit is not visibly abusive--they quip, but no different than most bickering couples...but most bickering couples don't have the albatross of spree killing looming over them. Adapted loosely from the killings by Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, it would be easy to be appalled at a film which seems preoccupied with an apparently neutral attitude toward similar murders and violence. However, the film actively avoids dramatizing and glamorizing violence, remaining vested in Holly's world, where the terrible consequences are ambiguous, not fully understood. Terrence Malick's Badlands approaches the interludes of gunfire with a kind of divine indifference, and a disconnected sense of morality that also mirrors Kit's inability to fully comprehend his crimes and the hurt they cause. One minute, he's dragging Holly's father into the basement, the next he picks up a toaster he found below and shows it to Holly as though it were a discovery. Only when Kit is in the limelight can he ply his charms and feel that he is where he belongs...for as long as that will last. Kit is so in love with the idea that others notice him that he's willing to die for it; Holly isn't.
Recommended for: Fans of unorthodox "love on the run" stories, strange romances punctuated by bouts of gunfire and occasionally wax poetic. Plenty of beautiful vistas of small towns, plains, and the great American landscape.
Kit claims he wants to be with Holly, but he really wants fame. Holly claims to want to be with Kit, but she just wants to go home, and wants her father alive again. The flame dies out on the plains of Montana, as they dance to Nat King Cole's "A Blossom Fell", as Holly recalls that she just stopped paying attention to Kit, talking about how she would write whole sentences on the roof of her mouth with her tongue out of boredom. This reflection is not the first moment of her sense that their young love is failing, though we can't help but wonder why it took her so long to reach this conclusion. No, Kit is not visibly abusive--they quip, but no different than most bickering couples...but most bickering couples don't have the albatross of spree killing looming over them. Adapted loosely from the killings by Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, it would be easy to be appalled at a film which seems preoccupied with an apparently neutral attitude toward similar murders and violence. However, the film actively avoids dramatizing and glamorizing violence, remaining vested in Holly's world, where the terrible consequences are ambiguous, not fully understood. Terrence Malick's Badlands approaches the interludes of gunfire with a kind of divine indifference, and a disconnected sense of morality that also mirrors Kit's inability to fully comprehend his crimes and the hurt they cause. One minute, he's dragging Holly's father into the basement, the next he picks up a toaster he found below and shows it to Holly as though it were a discovery. Only when Kit is in the limelight can he ply his charms and feel that he is where he belongs...for as long as that will last. Kit is so in love with the idea that others notice him that he's willing to die for it; Holly isn't.
Recommended for: Fans of unorthodox "love on the run" stories, strange romances punctuated by bouts of gunfire and occasionally wax poetic. Plenty of beautiful vistas of small towns, plains, and the great American landscape.