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Penetrating Character Study
by Yahoo! Movies User (movies profile)
Jul 30, 2005
2
of
2 people found this review helpful
"Badlands" ****
Based on the 1958 Charles Starkweather/Caril Ann Fugate Nebraska killing spree, "Badlands" stars Martin Sheen as Kit Carruthers, a 25 year old small town garbage man who effects a James Dean image and Sissy Spacek who plays his awkward, socially isolated 15 year old girl friend, Holly Sargis. Starting with the senseless murder of her widowed father (Warren Oates), Kit and Holly hit the road, not just to avoid the law, but in search of...what? That is the big question posed by screenwriter/director (and Rhodes Scholar!) Terrence Malick in his directorial debut. Kit is no raging killer nor his he a quiet man seething with all too long restrained rage. Rather, he is a thoughtful, and sometimes even polite young man who might not even understand his own motivations for his deadly actions. He harbors no malice toward nor seeks any revenge against his victims, for real or perceived wrongs. His killing, when he does, because there is a moment or two when he could easily kill but dosen't, seem a matter of fact reality, something to be done because of extingency circumstances. However, one does beget another and the hole is dug deeper and deeper. Kit fancies himself a James Dean rebel, but it's easy for us to see it's a facade, window dressing on a lost soul, someone in search of an answer to a question he hasn't even asked himself.
Does this make Kit the sympathetic murderer, the charismatic anti-hero Hollywood adores and is the main character of so many films? No. In spite of his inner emotional drifting, Malick and Sheen interpret Kit missing the one thing that would win the viewers heart: empathy. And here is the most chilling apsect of this very complex film. Kit is looking for something in all the wrong places and people are needlessly dying for it.
So where does this leave Holly? She is Malick's insightful observer, the sometime narrator. Holly is a young teenage girl who never quite fit in with the crowd, who seems emotionally disconnected from the world. In her immaturity, she looks up to the older and wiser Kit, because he accepts her for who she is. And even better, he loves her for who she is, as a man to a woman, not as a father to a daughter.
Terrence Malick gives "Badlands" an episodic feel without compromising the narrative. This directorial approach tends to give the viewer Kit's disconnected feel, as if each incident is just a moment on stage and has really has nothing to do with the rest of his life. As they are driving through the vast plains of South Dakota, Kit's search has so removed him from his own present reality that he even seriously suggests that they go north into Canada and when they get there, he will become a Mountie. It's actually Holly who has matured at this point, slowly beginning to connect the dots, slowly beginning to understanding the ramifications of their actions, when she simply points out she thinks they check drivers licenses before you can become a Mountie.
"Badlands" is a well directed, very penetrating character study. The psychology of and between Kit and Holly is so complex I could see a roomful of mental health experts debating their thought processess and actions for hours and never arriving at a consensus. Are Kit and Holly beasts? No. Are they completely unlikable? No, because on a certain level we can relate to them. They remind us that individually, at one time or another in our lives, we endure the same social pressures and inner emotional confusion as them and frighteningly, the only thing that could very well seperate us from them is the simply the good fortune of possessing better problem solving skills. |
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