Badlands

Badlands (1973) is set in South Dakota. Kit, twenty five and working as a garbage collector, meets Holly, who is fifteen. When her father objects, Kit kills him and the two run. They keep killing along the way. The story is invented but its source is real: the 1958 killing spree of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate. It is Terrence Malick's first film. He raised the money himself, putting in 25,000 dollars of his own; he found roughly half the total and executive producer Edward Pressman the other half. The rest came from professionals such as doctors and dentists. Sissy Spacek was in her second film and was cast first; Malick wanted her Texas background and accent. Martin Sheen struck him as too old for a character of twenty five, was cast anyway, and modelled the performance on James Dean. The shoot in Colorado on a 300,000 dollar budget was difficult. The first cinematographer clashed with Malick's unorthodox methods and left partway through, and two more followed him. It closed the 1973 New York Film Festival and reportedly overshadowed Mean Streets, screening at the same festival. It runs 94 minutes. Good for: the origins of American independent film, voiceover, and landscape. Less good for: the violence is shown without feeling and the film does not judge its characters, a distance some viewers find cold. Holly's narration makes light of what happens, deliberately, and it is unsettling. The plot repeats itself.