Directed by Terrence Malick. With Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen.
At this moment, I didn't feel shame or fear, but just kind of blah, like when you're sitting there and all the water's run out of the bathtub.
I was so happy when I got an e-mail from Criterion Channel announcing that Badlands would be streaming in December. This film has legendary status in my memory and I have been eager to watch it again. It has not fallen from its legendary status after a second viewing. This is great storytelling, great acting, great filmmaking.
I have been thinking a lot about how stories get attached to landscapes. In my mind, South Dakota is forever attached to this film, this story, this couple – Holly and Kit. There’s also Kansas and In Cold Blood. Is there something about the endless plains that inspires murderous sprees? Toward the end of Badlands, when Kit has stopped running and is waiting for the law to catch up with him, he builds a cairn at the side of the road. The cairn is a holdover from the ‘old world’ – a monument and a waymarker, a collection of traveler’s stories. When the arresting officers finally take him, he points it out to them, certain that they will want to return to the exact spot later to tell their own story. He’s built a monument to himself or to his story and their stories. I think of maps as a way to connect stories, waymarkers for meaning-making. Each point or line on a map is a story, has a story, relates a story, collects more stories, connects to another story. Maps are lyrical. Maps are songs. Badlands is a lyrical film. It is a murder ballad. A holdover from the ‘old world’. It is a cairn, a commemoration, and a marker, a story to which we gravitate, a fairy tale, a myth, a legend. It tells us something about how we navigate our world.