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Badlands Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 25 Reviews)

One of the best films of the Hollywood Renaissance
Terrence Malick has acquired a tremendous cult following as an auteur, but this, his first film, is the only truly successful one among them--and is one of the finest films ever to attempt to capture the donwside of the American Dream (and to do it without pretentiousness). Although many films have been inspired by the notorious 1950s killing spree of Charlie Starkweather and Caril Fugate, from NATURAL BORN KILLERS to THE FRIGHTENERS, BADLANDS is really the only one to resonate--in part because it treats its Starkweather-Fugate analogues not as the quintessence of gleeful evil but rather as polite and disaffected, making their killing spree all the more astonishing. Kit Carruthers (Martin Sheen) is handsome, well spoken, and very gracious; he chastises himself when he speaks ungrammatically and records notes telling children very pietistic and typical homilies about playing fair and listening to minority opinions but acceding to the will of the majority. He shoots the father of his girlfriend Holly (Sissy Spacek) only when the man threatens to deny Kit what he feels is fairly his--Holly--, and thereafter he uses his gun as a means to rid himself simply of people who attempt to arrest him. It becomes basically an adolescent wish-fulfillment scenario. When Kit and Holly escape to the forest and build themselves an elaborate treehouse, they become like the Swiss Family Robinson or Huck and Joe on the raft escaping their pursuers. The cinematography of the film has been widely praised, as has its extremely inventive use of music (Carl Orff's "Musica Poetica" as well as songs by mickey and Sylvia and Nat 'King' Cole); Sheen and Spacek could hardly be improved upon in the central roles.

Teenage Wasteland!
There are buttered-up popcorn movies that entertain you, score a ticket to "Jurassic Park" and Steven Spielberg for that, and there are films with gravitas, that move you, disturb you, drag you to the altar kicking and screaming, to consider circumstances you might not brave yourself.."Badlands," Terrence Malick's 1973 directorial debut, an overlooked jewel of a film, moves you, envelopes you, and takes an unsavory subject, the Charles Starkweather serial killings, crime spree, up in the vacated Badlands of South Dakota, and refines it til you ask, "How did we get here as a country? What went wrong and why?"..And then you appraise the daunting challenges a film-maker must overcome to project the psychopathic wrath of two teenagers (Martin Sheen as Kit Carruthers, Sissy Spacek as Holly Sargis) on a thrill-killing "honeymoon", onto the silver screen and make it empathetic, palatable..Why would anyone care in the first place about two low-life, lost highway delinquents, who gun down a parent, assume they can get away consequence-free, and move on with their careless lives like nothing more infractious than cutting an afternoon civics class has occurred?..However, "Badlands" is rooted in historical fact, these vile events happened to a pedestrian populace in North America, and Malick masterfully lets you the viewer tag along in this teenage angst riddled odyssey, deeper and deadlier into an American wasteland..The film is palpable evil genuis, arguably a top ten American film classic, irrespective it was shot by a first time director, with an unknown cast.."Badlands" resonates with gritty authenticity, cinematic style, fierce inhumanity, and the most haunting musical score (Erik Satie's Gymnopedies 3) that underwrites a Sissy Spacek voice over narration, spoken in a lazy monotone like a detached schoolgirl explaining away her unexcused absence in the principal's office, when in fact Holly (Sissy Spacek) is the fractured other half of the Kit Carruthers' killing machine, a bossom buddy in crime..Some films are purposefully pure entertainment, escapist faire.."Badlands" on the other hand is rare art, belongs in a museum.

Before the Fall
Kit and Holly are presented in this story by Terrence Malick as total innocents, living in a prelapsarian state, completely unaware of right and wrong, good and evil, and ignorant of guilt or sin. They have minimal conception of the consequences of their actions; in effect, they appear almost totally to lack imagination or foresight, and can barely empathise with each other, let alone other people. Things just happen, as Holly sees it. Kit doesn't feel hostility to the people he kills: they are merely in his way. There is no remorse. He is only marginally conscious that the structured world outside his own will eventually catch up with him. These kids are like Adam and Eve, with a limited knowledge of what is forbidden, but no real knowledge of the meaning of life and death. Holly throws out her sick catfish, showing no feeling. Her dog is shot as a punishment by her father, indicating he, too, is careless of death or pain. Kit stands on a dead cow, as though puzzled by its absence of life. Neither of the two seems to cry or laugh much. In one way these characters might also be thought of as throwbacks to a prehistoric, animalistic past, where the younger man simply eliminates the older, in order to secure a mate for himself. Just the way of nature, and beyond criticism. Apparently, so I've read somewhere, this is the mindset of the criminal, who cannot see what he is doing wrong. He has to get by, somehow, and takes the easiest path. Why work, when you can steal? If obstacles arise, eliminate them. People are OK, otherwise. Live now, die later. This is an extraordinary film, superbly acted.

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