Badlands (1973)

The word "badlands" is such a great word. It conjures up in the mind mysterious topographical images of a land that may not be hospitable.  My young family and I stopped at Badlands National Park in 1993 on our way from Boston, Massachusetts to Portland, Oregon. We were transfixed by the stark rust colored buttes, spires, hoodoos, and pinnacles that made up "the badlands." For many folks including CrazyFilmGuy, the word "badlands" reminds us of Bruce Springsteen's rock song Badlands from his Darkness on the Edge of Town album released in 1978.  I have to think that Springsteen may have been inspired by the title of director Terrence Malick's 1973 film BADLANDS loosely based on the true murderous crime spree of Charles Starkweather and his teenage girlfriend in Nebraska and Wyoming in 1958. 

Viewing a Terrence Malick film is an acquired taste and not for everyone.  His films are always beautiful to look at. At times he seems more interested in the flora and fauna (he studied as a biologist) then his characters.  He uses narration to great effect as we listen to his characters inner thoughts.  His camera often just follows actors walking instead of having dialogue which has been known to infuriate some actors.  Malick burst on the film scene with his first film BADLANDS and then DAYS OF HEAVEN (1978) with Richard Gere.  Then, Malick dropped off the film map for about twenty years until I stumbled across him with his World War II comeback THE THIN RED LINE (1998) based on the James Jones novel. I fell in love with his style.  He followed up with the historical drama THE NEW WORLD (2005) with Colin Farrell that I liked as well But then he let style get in the way of story and some of his later works like TO THE WONDER (2012), KNIGHT OF CUPS (2015), and SONG TO SONG (2017) are maddeningly beautiful with great actors in them but stories that fall short. 

BADLANDS is pretty straightforward storytelling for Malick but with a lyrical pace and flourishes of his trademark interest in nature, landscapes, and all creatures great and small. Kit Carruthers (Martin Sheen) is a restless, impulsive Korean War veteran now garbageman who one morning while collecting garbage in the sleepy town of Fort Dupree, South Dakota with his coworker Cato (Ramon Bieri) takes the rest of the day off.  As he walks through the neighborhood, he comes across a young bored teenager Holly Sargis (Sissy Spacek) twirling a baton on her front lawn. Kit strikes up a conversation with her. She thinks he looks like James Dean. He becomes smitten with her. Kit returns home and finds out he's been fired from his garbage collecting job.  He returns to see Holly, taking her into town. They begin dating, much to the chagrin of Holly's father (Warren Oates), a sign painter. 

When her father discovers she's still seeing Kit behind his back, the father shoots Holly's dog as punishment.  Kit visits Holly's father on a painting job to ease tensions but the father wants the wrong side of the tracks Kit to stop seeing his daughter.  Kit sneaks into their house, begins packing up Holly's clothes when Holly and her father return.  Kit shoots and kills Holly's father in cold blood.  Kit briefly leaves Holly at home but returns with gasoline and burns Holly's house down with her father's body inside. Kit and Holly hide out in some dense woods outside of town. Kit uses his army training to build an elaborate tree house. He sets traps and builds tunnels to hide in.  Kit and Holly live off the land, catching fish and stealing chickens. Holly narrates like it's a fantasy life, like they're married. 

Three bounty hunters show up.  Kit catches them by surprise, shooting two of the three in the back.  Kit and Holly head out for the open road.  Kit and Holly visit Kit's garbageman friend Cato who's house sitting for a friend way out in the middle of nowhere.  But when Cato acts like he's trying to alert the authorities, Kit shoots Cato.  Some friends of Cato's show up. Kit forces them into a storm cellar. We're not sure if Kit shoots them or not. When Kit and Holly return to the house, Cato is dead.  Kit and Holly hit the road again.

Kit picks a nice wealthy looking home to stop at for supplies. They force their way in past the deaf Maid (Dona Baldwin) and the Rich Man (John Carter) who owns the lavish home allows them to stay. Kit and Holly inhabit the house for a few days, pretending like it's their home.  But a salesman shows up (played by of all people the later reclusive director Terrence Malick) and Kit gets anxious. Kit suggests they go to Montana then make a run for Canada. Running on empty in their car, Kit tries to steal some gas.  A police helicopter shows up. Kit races off but Holly turns herself in.  A Sheriff (Gary Littlejohn) and his Deputy (Alan Vint) chases after Kit who finally turns himself in.  Kit acts like a celebrity as he's hauled away.  Thru narration, Holly tells us that she ends up marrying the son of her lawyer.  Kit, on the other hand, is sent to the electric chair six months later.  The End. 

BADLANDS is usually compared to Arthur Penn's BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967). Both films are about two young couples who turn to a life of crime and murder.  The young female leads (Sissy Spacek in BADLANDS; Faye Dunaway in BONNIE AND CLYDE) are bored with their humdrum lives.  The men who lead them into a life of crime (Sheen and Warren Beatty respectively) feel trapped by society.  They're as deadly as they are handsome.  On the surface, BADLANDS and BONNIE AND CLYDE seem similar but they have their differences.

Bonnie and Clyde held up banks because it was the Depression circa 1930s.  Clyde was from a poor family. He was just trying to feed his family by sticking it to affluent banks.  Kit in BADLANDS is a Korean War veteran in the late 1950s.  He should be appreciated as a war hero.  He looks like a matinee idol. Instead, he's got a dead end job as a garbageman.  He's got no purpose in life.  Holly is from a middle class family (raised mostly by her father when her mother died of pneumonia). She's just a teenager.  Kit isn't interested in robbing banks or liquor stores.  He just wants to be with Holly.  When Holly's father forbids it, Kit kills him in cold blood, no remorse. Holly, naive and now alone without family, chooses to follow Kit. Bonnie became a bank robber.  Holly's just along for the ride with Kit. She's no criminal. Bonnie and Clyde had somewhat of a plan.  They knew which banks they wanted to knock off.  Kit has lots of ideas but no real plan. Kit's impulsive. He's good with his hands and a rifle (his military training). But Kit and Holly are just running with no clear destination.

Although BADLANDS takes place in the late 50s, Kit Carruthers and his attitude and actions fit nicely with the anti-authority vibe of 1973 when BADLANDS was released. The army might have owned Kit during the Korean War but he answers to no authority (the garbage company or Holly's father) post war. Kit wants to be important, taken seriously, be somebody (like his idol James Dean). He has opinions and thinks he knows everything but no one takes him very seriously.  He discovers the one thing he's good at is killing people who get in his way. Is Kit a villain or an anti-hero? Malick's take on Kit is ambiguous. The first people he murders is a man who killed his girlfriend's dog and three greedy bounty hunters. We should hate Kit but we don't initially. But then he shoots his only friend Cato in the back. And when it looks like Kit shoots two friends of Cato's after forcing them into a storm cellar, Malick doesn't use any sound.  Did Kit shoot them or not? He pointed the rifle into the cellar but there's no sound of gunshot. 

For director Terrence Malick, BADLANDS is his most routine film (although I haven't seen DAYS OF HEAVEN). He hadn't discovered his free flowing, non-linear style yet. It's his first feature film and if he wants to make more, Malick needs to make a film that audiences will go to. But Malick does begin to explore his eye for nature and landscapes. When Kit and Holly hideout in the woods, Malick (and his cameramen Tak Fujimoto, Stevan Larner, and Brian Probyn) give us shots of a beetle, flowers, a swollen river with huge trees floating down it, deer grazing, and tall grasses blowing in the wind.  And he uses long lenses as Kit's Cadillac cruises across wide open and flat landscapes during their getaway.  Ironically, Kit and Holly never do drive through any badlands in South Dakota or anywhere else. My guess is Malick chose the title more as a metaphor for bad things that happen in the film and that it takes place in South Dakota (home of Badlands National Park). The film was actually made in Colorado. 

For Martin Sheen, BADLANDS was a breakout film for a young actor who had appeared in every cool TV show in the early 70s from HAWAII FIVE-O to MANNIX to LOVE, AMERICAN STYLE. Sheen's Kit is a difficult character to judge.  He's a bit of prick but he can also be charming with a deadpan sense of humor.  "I'll try anything once, " Kit tells Holly. It's only when we see his reaction to killing Holly's father and later his only friend Cato, no remorse or guilt at all, that we realize Kit is also a sociopath.  Sheen plays him with a cool demeanor. Kit rarely loses his temper until near the end of the film. Kit wants to die in a blaze of glory like Dillinger or Bonnie and Clyde. But when law enforcement closes in on him, he changes his tune and turns on the charm, basking in his brief celebrity, giving away his personal possessions to police officers, hoping for leniency. "I always wanted to be a criminal, I guess, "Kit reflects.  "Just not this big of one."

Sheen would follow up BADLANDS with a critically acclaimed performance as another doomed character in the TV movie THE EXECUTION OF PRIVATE SLOVIK (1974).  Sheen would end the best decade of his career playing Captain Willard sent to terminate the rogue Colonel Kurtz played by Marlon Brando in Francis Coppola's Vietnam epic APOCALYSPE NOW (1979). Other fine movies starring Sheen include David Cronenberg's THE DEAD ZONE (1983), Oliver Stone's WALL STREET (1987), and Martin Scorsese's THE DEPARTED (2006).

For Sissy Spacek, BADLANDS was only her second film as a young actress following her debut in Michael Ritchie's PRIME CUT (1972) with Lee Marvin and Gene Hackman. Sissy's Holly Sargis is your typical shy, bored teenager. Her father makes her take piano lessons. She loves her dog. When Kit shows some attention to her when no one else does, she's quietly interested. She's unassuming in her world that's shattered by Kit's act of violence. Holly narrates throughout the film as if she and Kit are living a fantasy life, like they're a young, married couple on the run.  "My destiny lays with Kit. For better or worse," she says. Holly's narration is one of the best parts of BADLANDS. 

But as the film progresses, Holly grows up before our eyes.  She begins to realize Kit is a bit crazy and he doesn't have an ultimate plan.  The murders she's witnessed including her father have become real to her. When the police start to close in, Kit makes a run for it but Holly gives herself up.  It's time to rediscover her real life, not the fantasy one. Spacek would play the telekinetic title role teenager in Brian DePalma's CARRIE (1976) and work with esteemed directors Alan Rudolph (WELCOME TO L.A.) and Robert Altman (3 WOMEN).  In 1980, she would win the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of country music singer Loretta Lynn in Michael Apted's COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER. Not a bad start for the young actress from Texas. 

Sheen and Spacek were unknowns in BADLANDS so Malick cast a more famous name in Warren Oates as Holly's sign painter father.  It's a brief, understated role by Oates who was normally playing more outlandish characters in films like Sam Peckinpah's THE WILD BUNCH (1969) and John Milius's DILLINGER (1973). One of Malick's strengths as a director besides narration and nature visuals is his use of music. Musica Poetica by Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman is a whimsical melody that doesn't seem right for two people on a murder spree but it captures how Kit and Holly feel when they're hiding out in the woods. When Kit burns down Holly's house with her father's body inside, the fire montage is accompanied by another, more haunting piece of music by Orff and Keetman called Passion. The dichotomy between the European sounding music and a South Dakota murderer is striking. Malick tosses in a couple of 50s songs including Nat King Cole A Blossom Fell and Mickey & Sylvia's Love is Strange to make the entire soundtrack eclectic and unique. 

Outlaws on the run was a popular genre in the 1970s following BONNIE AND CLYDE in 1967.  Sam Peckinpah kicked it off with THE GETAWAY (1972) starring Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw as bank robbers fleeing their crooked partners.  Malick would make his debut with BADLANDS in 1973 and the following year a young up and coming director named Steven Spielberg would direct his first feature THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS (1974) starring Goldie Hawn as a young wife who breaks her husband out of prison to rescue their young son from child welfare. Add in police rule breaker Clint Eastwood in Don Siegel's DIRTY HARRY (1971); a Sicilian crime family in Francis Coppola's THE GODFATHER (1972); husband turned vigilante Charles Bronson in Michael Winner's DEATH WISH (1974); and stupid, sympathetic bank robbers Al Pacino and John Cazale in Sidney Lumet's DOG DAY AFTERNOON (1975) and the first half of the 1970s was a hotbed for anti-heroes sticking it to the status quo as well.

Some fun facts about BADLANDS.  Martin Sheen's two young sons Emilio Estavez and Charlie Sheen (who would themselves become well known actors) have small cameos in BADLANDS.  They play two neighborhood boys playing on a street corner when Holly gazes down at them from her bedroom window.  Jack Fisk, an art director on BADLANDS who would work on many of Terrence Malik's films as a production designer including THE NEW WORLD and TREE OF LIFE, would fall in love and marry Sissy Spacek after they met on the set of BADLANDS.  Fisk would even direct his wife Spacek in RAGGEDY MAN (1981) co-starring Eric Roberts and Sam Shepard.

The real Charles Starkweather (the inspiration for Kit Carruthers in BADLANDS) murdered eleven people with his girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate in 1958. Starkweather was nineteen. Fugate fourteen. Malick doesn't have his characters Kit and Holly go on quite as murderous a rampage. Malick's more interested in his two characters relationship before and after the murders as well as the landscape around them.  BADLANDS is a great example of taking a real life story and turning it into something poetic and beautiful despite its horrific back story.