Terrence Malick’s crime romance is funny, frightening and unusually clear about how little its lovers understand themselves. Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek make the couple compelling company, though the film’s distance from those around them occasionally feels too easy.
Badlands makes a frighteningly persuasive romance out of two people who have little to offer each other beyond company and trouble. Terrence Malick allows us to enjoy their company without pretending that their violence has a noble purpose. We recommend it without hesitation, though its coolness can be hard to take. The film understands how appealing a young couple on the run can look, then keeps asking us to notice how little they seem to understand about anyone else.
Martin Sheen gives Kit Carruthers enough charm to make Holly’s attraction credible, but never enough depth to explain away his behaviour. There is something funny about the confidence of a man who seems to assume that being interesting excuses being dangerous. He lets that confidence remain attractive longer than is comfortable. Sissy Spacek’s Holly Sargis has a quieter certainty: she can tell this story, so she must have understood it. Together they make the romance convincing without turning the couple into people we would want to know.
We were chilled by Holly’s voiceover, because her level account gives sudden violence no more weight than the business of being in love. Sissy Spacek does not lean on the irony or ask us to congratulate ourselves for seeing what Holly misses. Her narration can sound almost reassuring while describing something that ought to stop her short. It is a precise performance, and her ordinary conversational tone makes the indifference harder to dismiss as something belonging only to these two people.
Stevan Larner, Brian Probyn and Tak Fujimoto share the cinematography credit, and the open country is given more attention than a getaway story strictly needs. The desolate views and sunset light can hold our interest quite apart from whatever Kit and Holly are doing. That matters: the beauty never seems to have been put there to flatter them or to make their crimes look important. At times the scenery is so inviting that we have to remind ourselves what has brought the couple into it.
Robert Estrin’s editing keeps the journey loose, resisting the steady acceleration a crime thriller usually promises. At 94 minutes, the film has room to wander without making that freedom feel like an indulgence. The sparse soundtrack, with music credited to George Tipton, also avoids telling us how alarmed we should be at every moment. That restraint makes the abrupt violence more disturbing, because we have not been told to prepare for it.
The reservation is that this distance can occasionally make the people outside the romance feel less substantial than the country around it. We understand the couple’s failure to care, but the film sometimes leaves us too close to their incuriosity. A little more attention to those affected would not require a speech explaining every action. For a few stretches, we wanted the film to look away from its lovers and stay with someone else.
Anyone coming for the gathering pressure of a pursuit thriller should adjust expectations: the film is interested in what the lovers think about themselves. Holly’s narration is worth listening to as closely as the dialogue. Leave time afterwards to disagree about how much she understands.
