La Balade sauvage

In January, 1958, nineteen-year-old Charles Starkweather and fourteen-year-old Caril Ann Fugate went on a murder spree in Nebraska and Wyoming. Eleven innocent people died. Most, though not all, of the killings were random. Starkweather and Fugate's story "inspired" several films, including this one.

In "Badlands", the pair's names were changed to Kit Carruthers (Martin Sheen) and Holly Sargis (Sissy Spacek), and their ages were altered slightly. From what I have read, Starkweather and Fugate were emotionally detached and casual about the killings, especially Charles, once the initial murders had occurred. Both Sheen and Spacek do a good job of mimicking this nonchalant attitude. At various points throughout the film, Holly narrates the story in an emotionless, monotone voice. It's like she's reading a diary of what happened as we, the viewers, watch movie footage of the events.

The film's title is appropriate, given that the characters' inner lives must surely have been wastelands, and given that the film's plot takes place mostly outdoors, on the lonesome High Plains, with its brooding and "stark" landscape.

The film's color cinematography conveys a mood of desolation, especially in those scenes that contain little more than the horizon, expansive blue sky, treeless plains, and a couple of lonely desperados. At one point, the color morphs into sepia-tinted images of small town America, as the whole country, in fear, takes up arms against the fugitives, a photographic change that renders an almost documentary tone to the film.

From time to time, classical background music accompanies the senseless violence, a cinematic contrast so "stark" as to make the film surreal. And, of course, the sequence toward the end where Kit and Holly, with car radio on, dance in the headlights as Nat King Cole sings "A Blossom Fell", is truly mournful and haunting.

"Badlands" is incredibly understated and low-key, as detached as the characters portrayed. Director Terrence Malick conveys a simple, uninvolved story, packaged in a film that makes no effort to communicate either symbolism or thematic depth. Nor does the film render judgments about the characters or events. It's an approach that probably wouldn't work today. But it is effective, and through the years the film has gradually become more respected as an excellent character study of 1950's teen rebels without a cause.

Surely one of the most brilliant films ever made. The haunting music and cinematography would almost suffice by itself. The hero is little more than a child: the heroine his willing accomplice, and we are made to question what is good and what is evil by seeing the world through the eyes of children. From the moment when the girl's father shoots her dog to punish her, we lose any loyalty to traditional values or to the rights of parents over their children. By the end, it's obvious to us that society doesn't value the lives of those who were killed. It anticipates Natural Born Killers, but perhaps says more and uses a tighter structure.

Brilliantly acted and directed, with many layers to it. A film to watch again and again.

Is it really possible that this luminous masterpiece is a first feature film? It is as though Mozart had started his career in composition with one of his mature symphonies. What is totally special about 'Badlands' is the visual control that Terrence Malick applies to the story, and his use of fabulous music to embed his amazing images in our mind. The 'Bonnie & Clyde'-ish story could have been turgid, but Malick turns it into a mythic journey.

At the heart of Malick's method is the fabulous interior monologue by Holly explaining and ironically commenting on the story. "Kit made me take my schoolbooks so I wouldn't fall behind with my studies...". This has been characteristic of each of Malick's films - Linda in 'Days of Heaven' and Witt in 'The Thin Red Line' have somewhat similar monologues - and 'New World' is monumentalised by the haunting monologue/montage with which it ends. Here it totally sucks the viewer into the story and makes the montages that it accompanies into, just about, the high-point of seventies cinema.

Alongside this, Malick uses some of the most haunting music in existence. Whether it is Carl Orff or Nat King Cole, Malick transports us with fabulous romantic imagery that perfectly balances it.

I started on this comment determined not to use the word 'poetry', but I just can't avoid it. With nearly all filmmakers, including very great ones, the style that they present is very much prose - great prose, perhaps, but firmly rooted on the ground. With Malick, we are taken, emotionally, to the stars by the lyric magnificence of the totality of his vision.

It is said that Welles learned cinema by watching John Ford's 'Stagecoach' before embarking on 'Citizen Kane'. Every young filmmaker should watch this amazing masterpiece again and again and again and inform their work with Malick's matchless sense of true cinema.

Based on the Starkweather-Fugate killing spree of the 1950's, this film follows 15 year old Holly Sargis as her quiet, small town existence is changed when she is approached by the 25 year old Kit Carruthers. The pair get friendly as they take walks together but Holly has to keep it a secret from her father, knowing he will disapprove. When her father finds out he shoots her dog as punishment but neither Holly nor Kit are dissuaded from being together. Kit decides to leave town and take Holly with him, when her father tries to stop him he kills him and heads off on the run.

Although on the surface this sounds like a lovers-on-the-run film with a serial killer edge, Malick's writing and direction prevents it from just being what you expect as he delivers a memorable debut. I first saw this about 15 years about when I was about 13 or 14 and at the time I only remembered that not a lot happened and that I was quite bored, so I can appreciate why some viewers don't find this to their tastes. Watching it again the other day I found it much more interesting, perhaps because I am older or maybe because I wasn't paying attention the first time. The film is slow but it is very interesting because of the characters that Malick has written and then allowed to develop out over the film. On one side we have the cold Kit who is a cold killer on one hand but breaks into a smile at comparisons with James Dean and the chance of fame. It has been done loads since but the look at the fame-hungry killer here still feels fresh.

On the other side of the story is Holly. As narrator a lot of weigh is put on her but the way it is done she is more than just a story teller. While the on screen action tells us about Kit, Holly's narration says a lot about her mind. Her fairytale, sing-song delivery and dialogue contrasts really well with the cold, unromantic violence on the screen. Her denial and desire to explain it all away is clear but not forced down the viewer's throat. The cast respond well to the direction and both give restrained but strong performances, avoiding showboating or pushing too hard. Sheen is strong, holding back for the majority and coming out at the end. Spacek is the heart of the story and her innocent (or naïve) character is played well both on screen as well as in her narration. Malick's direction is patient and as dry as the violence. The scenes are blessed with an open (empty) feel thanks to the impressive cinematography.

Overall this is a slow film that is fairly empty if viewed on a superficial level just looking at the narrative. However the characters and the examination of their mindsets is what makes the film interesting and Sheen and Spacek both react well to that. It also helps that Malick has done a great job as writer and director while his cinematographers have produced a barren and pointless landscape to match the heartless and pointless killings.

The serial killer genre is the most overdone in modern cinema, but director Terrence Mallick took a real life story to make his powerful debut, 'Badlands'. He even toned it down, his interest being not in presenting a picture of pure (and wholly artificial) evil but rather in portraying a wholly human story. Murder is depicted here in all its banality - people shot (off-screen) through locked doors, by a young man acting for wholly normal motives but without the customary restraints on behaviour that we term morals. The result is a haunting, though occasionally pretentious, study of individuals drifting beyond the bounds of civilisation, their physical location (America's still-wild west) symbolically matching their mental isolation. Sissy Spacek is particularly good as the ordinary girl just along for the ride. A fine film, 'Badlands' is also genuinely disturbing, in a way that Hannibal Lector could only dream of.