Badlands

In 1973 a young American director quietly released his difficult first film, a film with no major stars, a film not based on any successful novel, a film which had exhausted no less than three cinematographers during its difficult shooting period. Today, ‘Badlands‘ is considered an American classic which immediately placed director Terence Malick among the pantheon of great US directors, a position cemented over the intervening thirty five years with only a further three projects finally reaching the screen. The NFT have commissioned a new print of the film and are playing an extended run throughout August and September.

In small town America manual laborer Kit (Martin Sheen) meets and falls in love with Holly (Sissy Spacek), a fifteen year old girl. The union is forbidden by Holly’s father (the always great Warren Oates) leading to a confrontation where Kit shoots him dead, torches the house and flees into the wilds of South Nebraska with his undying love in tow. Pursued by the police, the film charts the lovers almost fable like odyssey through the rural American landscape.

   

I really can’t better the plaudits that the film has universally garnered – poetic, lyrical, hypnotic, dreamlike, transcendental – you get the drift. Like all his other films Malick uses that often clumsy cinematic conceit of the voice over to incredible effect, Holly’s adolescent musings providing a spectrum of commentary on the events occurring on screen. There’s also the soundtrack of course which has always haunted me since I first saw the film back in the 80’s, what I haven’t seen in it before is just how quietly funny it is, an extremely subtle humor which I doubt was intentional although it doesn’t detract from the films quiet beauty.

It’s very difficult to get a real handle on this film. Reviews inevitably refer to Kit as a young hoodlum, a criminal but we are offered no evidence of this prior to his murder of Holly’s father, a shooting that seems almost incidental, so perfunctory is its execution and emotional aftermath. He certainly is never presented as a eye twitching psycho in this or the other half dozen or so shootings that occur. It has to be one of the most ambiguous and mysterious films I’ve seen, it’s almost as if the casual murders are indifferently engulfed by the sprawling plains of Nebraska, Malicks camera lingering on the flora and fauna rather than the killings aftermath.

The theme of young lovers on the run is not new of course, American cinema is littered with such tales stretching from ‘They Live By Night’ (incidentally Nicholas Ray’s debut film so I’m sure there are plenty of studies out there comparing and contrasting the two), ‘Gun Crazy‘, ‘Bonnie & Clyde‘, ‘The Sugarland Express‘ (Spielberg’s  first film, hmm) with ‘Wild At Heart‘ bringing us right up to Stones controversial ‘Natural Born Killers‘. 

I’m going to hold fire on Malicks new film ‘Tree Of Life‘ as I’ve already outlined some thoughts on it as part of my films of the year post. I know it wrapped shooting last month so Malicks painstaking post production work has begun. Hopefully by December there will be a trailer in circulation and some of the films plot will be revealed although I should resist any potential spoilers of course. In the course of putting this together I’ve unearthed a new film for the mental checklist to track down although it doesn’t appear to have been released on DVD or video – I like a challenge. I’ll leave you with this superb montage of Malicks last two films.