Little did I know
Holly tells her life story like it’s a cheap novel. The opening line reads: “Little did I know,” she writes, “that what started in the alleys and backways of this little town would end up in the Badlands of Montana.” It is that wondering, narrative voice which sometimes goes unspoken but underlies all of Terrence Malick’s films: human lives shrink before the overwhelming bigness of creation.
Fifteen years old and practicing baton twirling on her front lawn when she meets Kit, who is 25 years old and just walked off his job as a garbage man. We never learn anything about Kit’s earlier years; he seems to step out from nowhere to see Holly and sweep her up into his whirlwind. Within a day or two, he has shot her father dead, set fire to their house, and they are on the run across South Dakota.
Terrence Malick’s “Badlands” (1973) is one version among many different retellings about two lovers who commit crimes together while being chased across America for instance, think Bonnie and Clyde (1967). It was actually based on Charles Starkweather’s story the “Mad Dog Killer.” Together with his girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate between 1957-58 he murdered eleven people including her parents and younger sister. At that time she was only thirteen while he had just turned eighteen.
To Malick, the criminals do not make sense there is no logical or psychological reason behind their actions. Kit, who has an uncanny resemblance to James Dean according to Holly, is nothing more than a beautiful psychopath. Meanwhile, Holly herself seems like a naive child with little understanding of the world around her. She narrates their journey as if it were written in stone by some higher power and speaks about death without any sign of emotion whatsoever. This can be seen when she recounts the time that her father shot his dog because he thought Holly was lying: “Then sure enough Dad found out I been running around behind his back. He was madder than I ever seen him,” she says nonchalantly about how her dad killed her pet for deceiving him.
Malick begins on leafy streets in a small town where Holly’s house sits on the corner resembling one used by Malick in “The Tree of Life” (2011). We feel his own memories at work here. Then they move into hiding with them through breathtaking scenes as they live off the land and wander aimlessly across empty great plains while being hunted down by national authorities. In their last stolen car, they ditch roads for unfenced prairies like pioneer settlers cutting cross-country over vast grasslands from a Cadillac which reminds us of David Brower’s backseat bubble baths during summer road trips through America’s heartland: “At the very edge of the horizon.” said Holly,” we could make out gas fires from refineries at Missoula while lights shone down south Cheyenne city bigger than anything else I’ve ever seen.”
“Badlands,” starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek was chosen as premier films for New York Film Festival among many others during this period flowering American auteurs 1970s . At age 33 years old ,having done mostly television acting until then-Sheen gives himself first important feature role; whereas only second movie role cameos spacek red-haired freckled slight girl not womanish enough yet mature enough to play opposite adult male lead character . Sex doesn’t seem necessary between Kit & Holly-kissing implies role-playing children rather than sexual intimacy between adults.
Their innocent demeanor clashes violently with their murderous tendencies; a friend of Kit’s tries to help but dials 911 instead after being shot in stomach left dazed dying contemplative (“I thought you said it was treasure?”) luring them into field attempted by using false claims (“You’re telling me there isn’t any?”). For no apparent reason except mere coincidence does holly find herself standing outside farmhouse belonging family whose members are subsequently slaughtered indiscriminately . Conversely ,a wealthy man shows up unscathed later observes how lucky he must have been uses dictaphone record perverse message listen kids don’t treat parents enemies just might learn something keep open mind.
Malick’s films are always deeply grounded in nature. They are the stage and humans come on it step by step, unsure of their roles. There is always an abundance of details, be it birds and small animals, trees and skies, empty fields or dense forests, leaves and grain always more space than the characters can fill. They are nudged here and there by events which they confuse with their destinies. In “Days of Heaven” (1978), his characters ride the rails into a Texas prairie. His “The Thin Red Line” (1998), a war movie, his characters are embedded in the jungles of Guadalcanal. His “The New World” (2005), shows Native Americans at home in primeval forests while British explorers build forts to hide in.
There is a strong sense of humans uneasily accommodated by the land. “Badlands” is technically a road movie. That is a form which breaks filmmakers free of tight plotting and opens them to whatever happens along the way characters and subplots can be introduced or disposed at will. The travelers are all that is constant.
Kit and Holly in “Badlands” flee towards nowhere although Kit vaguely talks about “heading north” becoming a Mountie so she must follow along not necessarily because she must but because she had crush on him; her father (Warren Oates) angered her by forbidding seeing him therefore she regards her father’s death only as convenience. An improbable tree house possibly intended to evoke Tarzan was built by Kit who had an idyll in dense forest where he rigged alarms setting booby traps for Holly to lead natural idle aimless life with him . One early shot of Kit shows him walking down an alley stamping on a tin can to flatten it then kicking it away gives something do for him.
In a mystical scene, Malick has Holly looking at slides that are far away locations through her father’s 3D Stereopticon: “It struck me that I was just this little girl who was born in Texas and whose father was a sign painter and who only had 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?”
She comes to realize, perhaps, that she had no meaningful existence before Kit. Toward the end of their long flight over the land, Kit’s appeal runs out: “I’d stopped even paying attention to him. Instead I sat in the car and read a map and spelled out entire sentences with my tongue on the roof of my mouth where nobody could read them.”
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