On The Run Archives - Sean Kelly On Movies

As part of TIFF's retrospective on Art Designer Jack Fisk, I watched Badlands, the 1973 debut feature from writer and director Terrence Malick. Holly Sargis (Sissy Spacek) is a 15-year-old girl living in the South Dakota town of Fort Dupree. One day she meets Kit Carruthers (Martin Sheen), a 25-year-old from the wrong side of the tracks, who enters into a love affair with Holly. However, when the union is disapproved by Holly's father (Warren Oates), Kit turns to murder and he and Holly end up on the run. Badlands Synopsis Badlands introduced the world to Terrence Malick, who would become known for his beautifully shot films and the lengthy multi-year hiatuses in between, most infamously the 20-year gap between his next film Days of Heaven and 1998's The Thin Red Line. On its surface, Badlands is a Bonny and Clyde lovers on the run style of story, as the protagonist and narrator Holly joins her older boyfriend Kit on the run after he begins a killing spree. However, the story is more about Holly's loss of innocence, as she lets herself get taken advantage of by Kit. My Thoughts on Badlands Before finally watching Badlands, the only films I've seen from Terrence Malick came after his 1998 comeback with The Thin Red Line, a film I thought was only OK, but is probably due for a rewatch. Probably my favourite film from Malick, and arguably his latter-day masterpiece, is 2010's The Tree of Life. However, after I was greatly underwhelmed by 2015's Knight of Cups, released at a point when he was directing films more frequently, I stopped paying attention to his film output. Going back to Badlands, this was a film produced before Terrence Malick was known for being Terrence Malick. While his later films would become known for their introspective voice-overs, Sissy Spacek's in Badlands is more of a straightforward narration. Badlands was one of Spacek's earliest film roles, coming out three years before her best-known role in Carrie, and working on the film is also how she met her husband Jack Fisk, who was the art designer for Badlands. Badlands was also one of the first notable film roles for Martin Sheen, who had predominantly TV credits for the decade prior. As Martin Sheen was 32 when he was cast, his character Kit, who was written to be 19, was aged up to be 25. In contrast, then 22-year-old Sissy Spacek was closer to Holly's age of 15, assisted by Spacek's youthful appearance, which would later help her again play a teenager in Carrie. The plot of Badlands is loosely inspired by the real serial killer couple Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, who went on a killing spree in 1958. Some of the other films that were influenced by this killing spree include 1963's The Sadist, 1993's Kalifornia, and 1994's Natural Born Killers. In Badlands, Holly is taken aback when she realizes how trigger-happy Kit is, but she obediently ends up accompanying him on the run. Reportedly Carol Anne Fugate was not happy with the characterization of Holly in Badlands, since she comes across as more of an accomplice than a kidnapped victim. While Badlands features many of the elements that Terrence Malick would become known for, it is probably not until 1978's Days of Heaven that his status as an auteur is established, including his penchant for including shots of moving through fields of wheat. However, Badlands still helped to establish the careers of both Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, who would go on to bigger roles such as Apocalypse Now and Carrie, respectively. Also, I could probably write a whole post about how Badlands' tagline "In 1959 a lot of people were killing time. Kit and Holly were killing people" was referenced in one of the letters by the Zodiac Killer as a condemnation of society's flippant attitude towards violence.

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