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Rating: The violence in "Badlands" is certainly not greater than that of many other films I've seen, but what shocked me, keeping me glued to the television, was not the long trail of blood left behind by the two protagonists. Terrence Malick, in his cinematic debut in 1973, paints a chilling fresco of a young Midwestern couple who, with an inhuman demeanor and almost animalistic simplicity, eliminate the obstacles in their path during their escape as if they were breadcrumbs accidentally fallen on a table.
A fundamental pivot of the work is the deep connection that the killer (Kit) has with nature: the director, with continuous zoom sequences, photographs, and panoramic views (bringing to mind the splendid frames of "Tree Of Life" although the technologies used are not comparable), tries to frame the man within the naturalistic context. It might seem that the protagonist of the work is the boy with the gun, but as the viewing progresses, I realize that the couple takes on the features of a puppet in the face of the natural world. The story is narrated by the cold voice-over of the beautiful co-protagonist: this atonal, impersonal, and icy voice sets the pace, combined with the rock-tinged music of the soundtrack, creating an ethereal, almost dreamlike atmosphere of the events being recounted without the slightest sense of rhetoric, as if it were a documentary featuring a feline killing prey. They rely multiple times on chance to choose the path, and the mountains of Montana are just the last of the endless destinations they had chosen without a real reason: they seem like a couple of grains of sand carried by the wind. It's a journey made up of very few contacts, isolated spaces, and long periods of reflection. Holly gradually distances herself from Kit, unable to continue fleeing in this manner, and her departure will be lethal for the young boy.
It is an intense work that already showcases some of the cornerstones of Malick's cinema: the aforementioned man/nature relationship, the use of dialogues reduced to a minimum alternated with significant silences, and the philosophical message of the work ("The Thin Red Line", "Days of Heaven") that attempts to provide, perhaps unsuccessfully, a rational and univocal answer to what the meaning of life is. Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek do a phenomenal job, and it doesn't surprise me that this work has been taken as a model and developed by other directors (I think of "Natural Born Killers" - "Wild at Heart", etc.). I can't understand, however, how this handful of magnetic, intense, and interesting minutes so rarely airs on television despite the undeniable success that the writer/director has achieved in recent decades and the remarkable quality of the product.
If you have never seen this film, you can get an idea by listening to "Nebraska" by Bruce Springsteen: he wrote this song after seeing the film on television in 1981. Those notes, that tone of voice, and that terrible text nestled in the sweet melody, perhaps manage to convey the beauty and strength of "Badlands" better than I have, and encourage you to search for it on the web, in the library, or among the television channels.
A hell of a cult!
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