Badlands (film)
Badlands (Directed by Terrence Malick)/1973
Terrence Malick has an ability like almost no other director
to make ordinary things beautiful. He sees something in nature that other
people don’t and can capture it on film. His movies try to take the
viewer into a mystical experience, where the shots and music have a meaning
much greater than the story being told. The piece of art as a whole tends to
rise above the story, which turns into a vehicle for the message: a
message communicated through vision and sound rather than conceptual language.
Badlands has some of Malick’s idiosyncratic abstract/mystical style, but the message is more about human behavior than some of his later films. It is an earlier Malick movie and is much more character driven (like Days of Heaven 1978). It is a story about a 15 year-old girl named Holly (Sissey Spacek) who enters a relationship with a man in his mid 20’s named Kit (Martin Sheen). Kit murders Holly’s father for preventing their relationship and Holly and Kit become vigilantes on the run across America.
Kit has a complete lack of ambition and direction and acts completely in the moment. This leads him to kill and rob without much anxiety or reflection on what he is doing. On the other hand, throughout the movie he's philosophical and talks about his actions in moral terms such as explaining why he killed this person or that based on ethical principles. There is a complete disconnect between the values with which he judges other people and the behavior he engages in; he shows no remorse for hurting others so long it is in his interest.
There is also the 'James Dean' aspect to Kit. Kit, it seems, has intentionally modelled himself on James Dean: both his look and his reckless bad boy behaviour. I think Malick is pointing out that when individuals have no meaning and ambition in their life, they shield themselves with some arbitrary persona: in this case being the one popularised through movies. Movie and television step-up to fill the nihilist void for a vessel who has forgotten his perfection.
Holly follows Kit across America. Her mother died when she was young and throughout the movie is involved in an extreme chain of events but also completely detached. Having Holly narrate the film emphasizes this detachment. Holly has disengaged from life and moves with whatever is the stronger force acting upon her. On the other hand, she speaks at times of going with Kit because he, unlike other people, was actually interested in her, a thought scarcely based on reality as throughout the film she argues with Kit about him never listening nor being interested in her.
What is Malick saying here? The film was made in 1973: a time where there was a tension between young people who wanted to live away from the restrictions of society and have a more transient and counter-cultural lifestyle. One could argue that Malick is making a statement about the hypocrisy and childishness of the youth of his generation. They make decisions based on pure selfishness and cover this up this with rhetoric.
I think the fact that Badlands is a movie set in the 1950s in rural American seems to discredit the above interpretation: the environment could not be further from the counter-culture movement of San Francisco in the 60s. It could be that Malick is saying ‘yes, this is going on now among the hippy generation, but it is nothing new: humans have always acted selfishly under the guise of something grander.’ I think that whatever one takes the message it be, it is likely to be more universal than a simple statement about the selfishness of the 1960s and early 70s.
Malick is such a subtle filmmaker. Nothing in this film is overstated and the viewer is left with enough to have a idea of that the message is, but not with the sense of it being forced. It's not a depressing movie either: he presents the characters as engaging thoughtlessly in a chain of events rather than being tormented by inner demons. It is very watchable: aesthetically pleasing, and gentle even while dealing with a violent story.
This is my favorite Malick movie (possibly tied with Days of Heaven). While Badlands is at times abstract, I sense at this stage Malick had not completely solidified how he saw the world. It has the mystical elements of Tree of Life, but isn't completely detached from human life.
Terrence Malick has an ability like almost no other director
to make ordinary things beautiful. He sees something in nature that other
people don’t and can capture it on film. His movies try to take the
viewer into a mystical experience, where the shots and music have a meaning
much greater than the story being told. The piece of art as a whole tends to
rise above the story, which turns into a vehicle for the message: a
message communicated through vision and sound rather than conceptual language.Badlands has some of Malick’s idiosyncratic abstract/mystical style, but the message is more about human behavior than some of his later films. It is an earlier Malick movie and is much more character driven (like Days of Heaven 1978). It is a story about a 15 year-old girl named Holly (Sissey Spacek) who enters a relationship with a man in his mid 20’s named Kit (Martin Sheen). Kit murders Holly’s father for preventing their relationship and Holly and Kit become vigilantes on the run across America.
Kit has a complete lack of ambition and direction and acts completely in the moment. This leads him to kill and rob without much anxiety or reflection on what he is doing. On the other hand, throughout the movie he's philosophical and talks about his actions in moral terms such as explaining why he killed this person or that based on ethical principles. There is a complete disconnect between the values with which he judges other people and the behavior he engages in; he shows no remorse for hurting others so long it is in his interest.
There is also the 'James Dean' aspect to Kit. Kit, it seems, has intentionally modelled himself on James Dean: both his look and his reckless bad boy behaviour. I think Malick is pointing out that when individuals have no meaning and ambition in their life, they shield themselves with some arbitrary persona: in this case being the one popularised through movies. Movie and television step-up to fill the nihilist void for a vessel who has forgotten his perfection.
Holly follows Kit across America. Her mother died when she was young and throughout the movie is involved in an extreme chain of events but also completely detached. Having Holly narrate the film emphasizes this detachment. Holly has disengaged from life and moves with whatever is the stronger force acting upon her. On the other hand, she speaks at times of going with Kit because he, unlike other people, was actually interested in her, a thought scarcely based on reality as throughout the film she argues with Kit about him never listening nor being interested in her.
What is Malick saying here? The film was made in 1973: a time where there was a tension between young people who wanted to live away from the restrictions of society and have a more transient and counter-cultural lifestyle. One could argue that Malick is making a statement about the hypocrisy and childishness of the youth of his generation. They make decisions based on pure selfishness and cover this up this with rhetoric.
I think the fact that Badlands is a movie set in the 1950s in rural American seems to discredit the above interpretation: the environment could not be further from the counter-culture movement of San Francisco in the 60s. It could be that Malick is saying ‘yes, this is going on now among the hippy generation, but it is nothing new: humans have always acted selfishly under the guise of something grander.’ I think that whatever one takes the message it be, it is likely to be more universal than a simple statement about the selfishness of the 1960s and early 70s.
Malick is such a subtle filmmaker. Nothing in this film is overstated and the viewer is left with enough to have a idea of that the message is, but not with the sense of it being forced. It's not a depressing movie either: he presents the characters as engaging thoughtlessly in a chain of events rather than being tormented by inner demons. It is very watchable: aesthetically pleasing, and gentle even while dealing with a violent story.
This is my favorite Malick movie (possibly tied with Days of Heaven). While Badlands is at times abstract, I sense at this stage Malick had not completely solidified how he saw the world. It has the mystical elements of Tree of Life, but isn't completely detached from human life.
