Badlands (18.)
Directed by Terrence Malick.
Starring Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates, Alan Vint. (1973.) 94 mins. Released by Warners on their Premium Collection, containing the film on Blu-ray, DVD or download.
Nature; Bored Killers. Terence Malick's first film is a tale of senseless youth violence, an aimless killing spree across the badlands of Dakota in the 1950s that takes you to a place no other tale of senseless violence has found. As the end credits roll you are left with a feeling of oddly serene nihilism. This story of a James Dean look-alike and his teen girlfriend going on a killing spree in the Midwest in the late fifties slips by like a fairy tale Natural Born Killers, complete with Jackanory style narration. What disturbs is not the horror of the acts but the way Kit (Sheen) and Holly (Spacek) and, most all of, their victims seemed to be locked inside a trance, unable to resist the course of events. These matters of life and death just don't seem like matters of life and death. Around them, the world goes on as before.
Probably its greatest trick is the use of classical pieces by Satie and Orff. More than the acting or the beautiful cinematography what people associate the film with is Carl Orff's Gassenhauer, the piece that Hans Zimmer “borrowed” for True Romance. Once they start killing people Kit and Holly become estranged from the world, and the film's reality is at a remove from the real world. The classical pieces complete the hermetic seal. It is like a Cormac McCarthy novel in snowglobe form.
I first got to review this when it got a cinema re-release a decade ago. Back then Malick was still a reclusive genius, and his long-gestating Tree of Life was still a potential masterpiece. Now this dual format Blu-ray/ DVD edition comes into a world where Malick is seen as something as a charlatan, the recluse who blew it by making a series of fatuous celebrity obsessed pieces that were like advertorials for nothing.
Now, we are all too aware of his limitations, does his debut still hold up? Badlands exhibits all the factors we now recognize as his one size fits all approach to filmmaking, squeezing whichever subject he has alighted on (Second World War, Pocahontas, an Austin music festival) into his wood from the trees style – innocent narration, opaque characters who tell you everything and reveal nothing; a camera that is constantly being distracted by any passing bit of wildlife or nature.
Any director who spends years editing his films tends to end up being lauded as a genius when in fact they're more likely to be hit and hope merchants, scrambling around trying to find the point in all the footage. So maybe it was dumb luck or the lack of options caused by his limited budget, but it is a fortunate little miracle that everything fell perfectly into place at his first attempt.
I don't know what it says about me that the only two Malick films I really like (this and Thin Red Line) are the ones with the most guns and violence in. I also don't know why Malick came so ferociously a cropper when he stopped making period pieces and tried to work in a contemporary setting but you can certainly see in Badlands how the past somehow offers him a layer of protection. In the extras for the 60s TV series The Avengers, it was explained that the programme's distinctive no-extras look was because they could never film Steed in a crowd scene because he looked ridiculous next to other people. Malick needs the curtain of the past to make his heightened reality work. The modern world exposes him, strips him bare. Even in Tree Of Life, the modern day scenes with Sean Penn were by far the worst part of the film.
Badlands is undiminished both by the passing of time and the collapse of its director's reputation. It's a perfect little American masterpiece. Badlands is still treating us good.
Directed by Terrence Malick.
Starring Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates, Alan Vint. (1973.) 94 mins. Released by Warners on their Premium Collection, containing the film on Blu-ray, DVD or download.
Nature; Bored Killers. Terence Malick's first film is a tale of senseless youth violence, an aimless killing spree across the badlands of Dakota in the 1950s that takes you to a place no other tale of senseless violence has found. As the end credits roll you are left with a feeling of oddly serene nihilism. This story of a James Dean look-alike and his teen girlfriend going on a killing spree in the Midwest in the late fifties slips by like a fairy tale Natural Born Killers, complete with Jackanory style narration. What disturbs is not the horror of the acts but the way Kit (Sheen) and Holly (Spacek) and, most all of, their victims seemed to be locked inside a trance, unable to resist the course of events. These matters of life and death just don't seem like matters of life and death. Around them, the world goes on as before.
Probably its greatest trick is the use of classical pieces by Satie and Orff. More than the acting or the beautiful cinematography what people associate the film with is Carl Orff's Gassenhauer, the piece that Hans Zimmer “borrowed” for True Romance. Once they start killing people Kit and Holly become estranged from the world, and the film's reality is at a remove from the real world. The classical pieces complete the hermetic seal. It is like a Cormac McCarthy novel in snowglobe form.
I first got to review this when it got a cinema re-release a decade ago. Back then Malick was still a reclusive genius, and his long-gestating Tree of Life was still a potential masterpiece. Now this dual format Blu-ray/ DVD edition comes into a world where Malick is seen as something as a charlatan, the recluse who blew it by making a series of fatuous celebrity obsessed pieces that were like advertorials for nothing.
Now, we are all too aware of his limitations, does his debut still hold up? Badlands exhibits all the factors we now recognize as his one size fits all approach to filmmaking, squeezing whichever subject he has alighted on (Second World War, Pocahontas, an Austin music festival) into his wood from the trees style – innocent narration, opaque characters who tell you everything and reveal nothing; a camera that is constantly being distracted by any passing bit of wildlife or nature.
Any director who spends years editing his films tends to end up being lauded as a genius when in fact they're more likely to be hit and hope merchants, scrambling around trying to find the point in all the footage. So maybe it was dumb luck or the lack of options caused by his limited budget, but it is a fortunate little miracle that everything fell perfectly into place at his first attempt.
I don't know what it says about me that the only two Malick films I really like (this and Thin Red Line) are the ones with the most guns and violence in. I also don't know why Malick came so ferociously a cropper when he stopped making period pieces and tried to work in a contemporary setting but you can certainly see in Badlands how the past somehow offers him a layer of protection. In the extras for the 60s TV series The Avengers, it was explained that the programme's distinctive no-extras look was because they could never film Steed in a crowd scene because he looked ridiculous next to other people. Malick needs the curtain of the past to make his heightened reality work. The modern world exposes him, strips him bare. Even in Tree Of Life, the modern day scenes with Sean Penn were by far the worst part of the film.
Badlands is undiminished both by the passing of time and the collapse of its director's reputation. It's a perfect little American masterpiece. Badlands is still treating us good.
