Badlands

Year: 1973 (USA)
Genre: Drama/Romantic Drama
Directed: Terrence Malick
Stars: Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates, Ramon Bieri, Alan Vint, Gary Littlejohn, John Carter, Terrence Malick
Production: Warner Bros.


It’s interesting to see what talented, game changing and notorious filmmakers created before they became big names in the industry. Steven Spielberg’s first theatrically released film is a little known Goldie Hawn starring popcorn flick called The Sugarland Express (1974) while Christopher Nolan full length student film was a black-and-white mind-bender called Following (1998). First films have their faults of course but they’re exciting to see in a “before they were famous” kind of way. Lacking signature touches and emphasis on niche placements, the only commonality between a truly great director’s freshman film and his entire repertoire is unbridled energy coming from behind the camera. Like a lost treasure, these films can give a cinema-phile like me quite a high.

I had that feeling watching Badlands (1973) for the first time the other day. I wouldn’t go as far to say director Terrence Malick is among my favorite filmmakers of all time, but every film I’ve seen of his has managed to surprise and impress me. He’s an artiste unlike any other, often employing an expressionistic narrative coupled with an uncompromised visual composition. His 1978 followup to Badlands, Days of Heaven is one of the most visually beautiful films I have ever seen while The Tree of Life (2011) is not only a beautiful picture, but a movie that touched my very soul.

Badlands is an excellent beginning to a revelatory career. The film doesn't employ Malick’s omnipotent observational narrative quite to the point of The Thin Red Line (1998). The camera remains objective while Sissy Spacek’s Holly informs the story with voiceover that is not entirely neutral from the story but opaque and third person. Like most of Malick’s films, the dialogue is minimalistic and occasionally cryptic but the consequence of this is the audience becomes fully immersed observers. The film bids us into the world of Kit (Martin Sheen) and Holly from their detached perspectives; inviting onlookers with original photography of the eerily empty northern American plains.

 

Very empty.

 The film begins with Holly and Kit first meeting each other in their small, desolate South Dakota town. Kit is a garbage collector ten years her senior. He emphasizes everything he says with a sad-sack swagger but cannot cover up his desperation for recognition. “He looked just like James Dean,” swoons Holly when first getting to know Kit. Her personality is also informed and defined by the fantasies of disaffected youth. A world populated by vapid movie star magazines and escapist fairytales. When Kit shoots her father, they run away, at one point even abandoning roads in favor of driving his Cadillac through open range. They leave the civilized, adult world of responsibility in favor of a romanticized life on the run. Holly notes that at one point, “The world was like a faraway planet to which I could never return. I thought what a fine place it was, full of things that people can look into and enjoy.”

The body count starts racking up throughout the film as bounty hunters, the police and innocents are ensnared in their world of violence. Neither Holly nor Kit reacts with any kind of remorse or regret or even fear. They see little meaning outside of their idyllic odyssey filled with red helium balloons and buried buckets filled with meaningless trinkets, why would they have feelings of any kind towards complete strangers?

Badlands postulates perpetual violence as our natural state made most evident in youth. Holly spends most days on the road reading stolen teen magazines contemplating love affairs of movie stars. She experiences wearing makeup for the first time and dances around one of their hideouts like she was in a ballroom. She never actively participates in the killing yet doesn't cognitively recognize it as an evil action. Kit maybe in his twenties but his actions are those of a child. He uses his gun to ward away minor trivialities from bothersome people to a pointless football. At one point their heading is decided by an empty Coca-Cola bottle and in another they construct a tree house and spend their mornings coming up with the password of the day.

Characters that claim responsibility and assume adulthood seem envious of Kit’s stature as one of America’s most wanted; that is when they are not dispatched or displaced. Kit revels in his new found glory much like the titular characters of Bonnie and Clyde (1967) did. Unlike that movie however Badlands doesn't succumb to gallows humor, preferring an adult attitude of contemplation; an attitude that would come to permeate all of Terrence Malick’s subsequent films.

The Japanese word Shibusa I feel perfectly articulates the meaning behind Malick’s work. It’s a word literally meaning “spirit of poverty” His approach to his art is similar to that of artist Jan Vermeer and poet Walt Whitman: contemporary yet timeless, affecting but therapeutic, humble yet grand. In the words of film critic Chris Wisniewski, “[Terrence Malick] is a filmmaker with a clear sensibility and aesthetic who makes narrative films that are neither literary nor theatrical.” To put it another way, Badlands is one hell of a first feature.

Final Grade: B+