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For a directorial debut, Badlands is quite an achievement. In this crime story, Martin Sheen plays Kit, a twenty-something garbage man in small-town South Dakota. Sissy Spacek plays the waifish and homely-looking Holly, a 15-year old girl living with her father and pet dog. Kit meets Holly, and they strike up a friendship that develops into something more. When Holly’s father tells Kit he forbids him from seeing his daughter, the trigger-happy Kit shoots him point blank. The lovers run away together and live a Thoreau-esque existence in the woods, raising chickens and hunting for food. But when three men find their whereabouts, Kit shoots them too.

They take off towards Montana, with the duo committing murders along the way. Nothing fazes Kit; he imagines himself as James Dean – rebellious, misunderstood, alienated. But from what? Unlike Dean’s movie characters, Kit doesn’t know what he’s being alienated against, and as for being misunderstood, he doesn’t give us the slightest hint that there is anything TO understand. He’s rebellious because, well, he just doesn’t have anything else to do. Maybe this is what Malick intended, but I didn’t like the fact that there wasn’t an explanation for Sheen’s lifeless character. He’s an empty shell who kills not even because he wants to, but because people just happen to get in his way.

As for Miss Holly, she, like Kit, is also empty inside. Most of the background information we learn about each character is told through Holly’s banal voice-overs. As much as I like narration (especially narration of thoughts, like in Wings of Desire or Elevator to the Gallows), this was a bit of an over-kill. Holly’s prosaic character wasn’t very convincing to me either; her lack of concern for Kit’s victims, especially her own father, was more confusing than it was shocking. Her indifference towards the murders did make me feel uncomfortable though: it is what she does not do that makes the murders more harrowing. However, there wasn’t enough evidence of Holly’s love for Kit or for anything to justify her standing by him throughout his killing spree. She was completely uninterested, and I gradually became uninterested in her.

All in all, I do appreciate Malick’s immense talent. His filming style is unique and the cinematography is this movie just beautiful. But is Badlands as multi-textured and deceptively complex as some make it out to be? Not quite. Perhaps I am too naïve to fully understand this film. Or maybe it really is that empty.

Oh for the love of Terrence Malick. You can tell he really just wanted to cut together a montage of egrets, cormorants, doves and pheasants. Just doing nothing. Just sitting in the sun. And then a red-tailed hawk might swoop down and carry one off the burning plain into the setting sun. This film is all about sunsets and idle aggression. Kit doesn’t really much WANT to kill anyone, it’s just these folks keep getting in the way of him absconding with his child bride. He’s on a knights quest! In his eyes. In everyone else’s eyes he’s just a fancy boot wearing psychopath on a killing spree. Fooling around in South Dakota on the working end of dusted fields and busted Cadillac’s. A genius script. The only time when I’ve felt comfortable saying that with Malick.

“Opera Primas” usually falls in two categories: failed exercises (“fear and desired” as kubrick´s own s remarks) or artistic gems (“Un chien andalou”, “Citizen Kane”; this movie)
Terrence Malick came from screenplays and short films, and also philosophy and journalism, and this movie takes on the same subjects. It´s an account of a series of horrible acts (almost yellow journalism) told with the objective-subjective approach some philosophers (Schopenhauer came to mind) use for matters of violent death, and peaceful life…
but this movie also had a very detailed (architectural almost) sense of pacing, a rhythm akin to some classic compositions (Mozart´s adagios, especially the one of the piano concert no. 23 comes , maybe as a new musical world, to mind) as Mozart´s best pieces, this movie, moves us by the very complex interjection, the unveiling of a veil… better yet the conforming of a single, multilayer ed but ultimate thin line, that reflects ways of life, the human condition on the face of a cosmos that keeps “it´s” mysteries to itself, Mozart’s (and Malick´s) gift seems to rest on a vision of human life as a whole, and a profound control of the expressive means of their medium, even from a very early moment of their careers.

“Badlands” works as a foundation stone for the rest of Malick´s career. His love of nature, fauna, flora and of rivers and of people appear here; and some say better than his other movies; his (not very well trained; “three cinematographers one of them making his first feature) camera; moves, gently, between people that doesn’t love their neighbors; and landscapes of serene beauty, while some very XX century music. (Even a leit motif by Carl Orff). Counterpoints sometimes or enhances the meaning t hat Malick tries to convene; some would say conjure; and certainly evoques…
Warner´s DVD had just the movie, without a worthwhile transfer; that is almost painful to watch, knowing how good this movie should have looked at the theater. But the power of this film cannot be appreciated easily any other way; so I´d like to recommend you make a suggestion to Criterion for a blu ray joint venture release (a la “Days of Heaven” with paramount and “the thin red line” with fox) If you want to support Warner Bros go see “Inception” or buy a Stanley Kubrick´s Blu-ray; that´s of course if you had already seen “badlands” , if you haven´t, try to pick this DVD (borrow it or rent it) don´t wait much longer.

A character at the end of Terrence Malick’s debut feature film Badlands tells antihero Kit that he is “quite the individual”. That could be the understatement of 1973. Based on the 1950s Starkweather-Fugate killing spree, the film tells the tale of a 25-year old James Dean type and his 15-year old girlfriend on the run. Shy, young, and naïve, Holly falls in love with this man who could have any girl given half the chance, but somehow picked her. What starts as a casual affair behind her over-protective, sign-painting father, spirals out of control along with his wavering moral center. Always seeming a bit off, right from our introduction to him offering his garbage man coworker a dollar to eat a dead collie on the side of the road, Kit’s true ambivalence to the sanctity of life—besides that of his own or his girl—rises to the surface when his desires are suppressed, leaving him with no option besides doing whatever is necessary to survive. Intelligent or lucky, he is able to lead an entire country’s police force around on a wild goose chase, never wanting to commit murder, but also never feeling too remorseful when he does.

Badlands has become something of a classic as it ushered in the career of reclusive perfectionist Malick to the film-going public. I can see the appeal, from the gorgeous visuals, methodical action, and compositional skill at work, but when I look beyond the perfection of Martin Sheen’s role as Kit, I can’t help not genuinely seeing much else. You take away his rendition of today’s Tabloid-cover celebrity malice and all that’s left is a plodding film of a confused girl traveling the Dakota badlands, indifferent to her companion’s crimes. As a commentary on society’s need to glorify murderers, glamorizing their cool, calm demeanors in the face of life or death situations, you can’t help but see the beginnings of the atrocity our world has become today. The quickest way to become famous is to kill a bunch of people and do so without capture for an extended period of time. No one wants to listen to a feel-good tale of down-on-their-luck Samaritans when a salaciously written tome featuring gunplay and spilled blood waits on the next page. And when your star attraction has the mentality of wanting to have a girl on his arm at the end to scream his name to the heavens as his last breath exits, well, even better.

I appreciate the minimalism; on paper this film should be a contender for my favorite ever. I guess it just didn’t fully click. Maybe I find it hard to believe a girl can watch as the man she loves kills her father and for all intents and purposes kidnaps her to go on the run, always looking behind them. To the credit of all involved, though, the performances almost make me believe it could happen—and being based on a true story, it did. You do first wonder if anyone really is coming after them once they leave Texas or whether the paranoia is all in Kit’s warped mind and Sissy Spacek’s Holly simply regurgitates his fears in her narration. Their actions portray the ticks and maneuvers of a junkie, always on edge and never having the time to ask questions. But that feeling doesn’t last long as we are shown montages of men arming themselves in a sequence recalling newsreel footage, readying for the misfortune of crossing the path of these misguided souls. Trigger-happy and nervous are never a good combination; mix those with a winning personality able to naturally turn any adversary into fan is as lethal as it gets.

For completion of review, please visit: http://www.jaredmobarak.com/2010/08/20/badlands/

this is for me the worst malick’s film, but you know, when i said malick’s worst, it could be someone’s masterpiece, this is actually a really good film, an accomplished one, but my problem is just as simply as this film is different from other malick’s film, this is not as insightful as the thin red line, not as beautiful as days of heaven, and not as epic as the new world, but considering this is his debut, i forgive him, at least this film showed malick’s potential, with that interesting narration, which later become malick’s trademark.,
the important things from this movie are, this movie inspires many modern movies like natural born killer, and true romance (quite big inspiration for tarantino, eh?), and Kit Carruthers could be one of the most interesting character in cinema..

Tolstoy said “if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.” If Malick has never heard this quote before (he probably has) I think he would find it very relevant to “Badlands.”

My affinity for Malick has always been based off his ambiguous and philosophical narrative techniques, which he mixes so well with his beautiful imagery and delicate transitions from shot to shot. I also love how he manages to play down events which would be exploited by most other filmmakers, to explore a much different reality. It really adds another dimension of thought to his films, almost as if he were telling two separate stories intertwined into one. I found “Badlands” to be a type of fantasy movie, where the brutal murders came second to the serene story of two young people who just felt like getting a chance to start over and live carelessly with only one another, and rely on each others being, if not just for the moment. It left me completely unable to respond normally without thinking outside the box, and that’s when I know that I’ve enjoyed something. Though I still like “Days of Heaven” even more, this is a superlative debut effort, and has a spot in film history for a reason.