Badlands (1973)

Director:

Terrence Malick

Writer:

Terrence Malick (written by)

Release Date:

7 April 1975 (Sweden)

Genre:

Adventure | Crime | Drama | Romance | Thriller

Tagline:

He was 25 years old. He combed his hair like James Dean. She was 15. She took music lessons and could twirl a baton. For a while they lived together in a tree house. In 1959, she watched while he killed a lot of people.

Plot:

Dramatization of the Starkweather-Fugate killing spree of the 1950's, in which a teenage girl and her twenty-something boyfriend slaughtered her entire family and several others in the Dakota badlands.

Plot Keywords:

Lovers On The Lam | Underage Smoking | Kissing | Vandalism | Montana

Awards:

Nominated for BAFTA Film Award. Another 3 wins

Cast

Martin Sheen	...	Kit
Sissy Spacek	...	Holly
Warren Oates	...	Father
Ramon Bieri	...	Cato
Alan Vint	...	Deputy
Gary Littlejohn	...	Sheriff
John Carter	...	Rich Man
Bryan Montgomery	...	Boy
Gail Threlkeld	...	Girl
Charles Fitzpatrick	...	Clerk
Howard Ragsdale	...	Boss
John Womack Jr.	...	Trooper
Dona Baldwin	...	Maid
Ben Bravo	...	Gas attendant

Runtime:

94 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Spanish

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Australia:M (DVD rating) | UK:15 (re-rating) (2008) | Australia:PG | Singapore:PG | UK:18 (video rating) | Finland:K-15 (re-rating) (2003) | Finland:K-16 (re-rating) (1987) | Ireland:15 | Norway:15 | Sweden:15 | USA:PG | West Germany:16 | Finland:K-18 (1980) | Portugal:M/16 (DVD rating) | UK:X (original rating)

Filming Locations:

Colorado, USA

Company:

Badlands Company

Trivia:

The 'Bandlands' plot and lead characters of Kit and Holly are based on Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate, who in 1958 embarked on a murder spree that horrified the country.

Goofs:

Audio/visual unsynchronized: Car tires screech during the car chase at the end, even though they're on dust roads and sand.

Quotes:

Holly Sargis: One day, while taking a look at some vistas in Dad's stereopticon, it hit me that I was just this little girl, born in Texas, whose father was a sign painter, who only had just so many years to live. It sent a chill down my spine and I thought where would I be this very moment, if Kit had never met me? Or killed anybody...

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs and Rock 'N' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood (2003)

Soundtrack:

Musica Poetica

The voice of innocence whispers in our ears...

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. 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.