Badlands | | Cast : | Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek | | Director : | Terrence Malick | | Studio : | Warner Studios | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | January 01, 1973 | | DVD Released Date : | April 27, 1999 | | Language : | French (Subtitled), English (Dubbed), French (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), English (Original Language), French (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | May 31, 2005 | | Summary | WOW is this film overrated... | Content
 | First off, I think that the cinematography, the use of music, and the overall directoral tone of the film are chillingly captivating, almost mesmerizing -- much like "Days of Heaven." But I also believe they mask an intolerable deficiency at the heart of this work, the ineffective characterization of our protagonists.
We hear much from Spacek's monologues, which ring of uneducated philosophizing and adolescent longing... but I personally never felt like they addressed some of the issues that would have given the film more thematic depth. Same with Sheen's pointless and often unconvincing musings on life (witness his recording sessions in the film). They stand out as obvious attempts to provide depth to otherwise uninteresting characters.
Of course, "Badlands" is one of those films that you can never say anything like this about, for all of its defenders will immediately counter that this is part of the very "chillingness" of the film. I beg to differ. I think Terence Mallick hides behind his characterizations of "simple folk" and winds up selling them short.
This becomes increasingly cloying in the Martin Sheen character. Apparently, he thinks that looking aloof and talking in a drawl is enough to give his character depth. To me, it comes across as a half-baked country boy impersonation with exceedingly little to recommend it.
What's worse, Mallick then very much does intrude on the spare, minimalist acting to slather on his directoral message. It is uneven, often overbearing, and ambiguous in its convictions. I would argue that this lack of coherence, particularly when dealing with events of this caliber, marks a shallow, cowardly effort. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 27, 2005 | | Summary | A lovers-on-the-lam movie, with a terrifying edge. | Content
| Terrence Malick and Tak Fujimoto has showed America's social enigma and suffocating homogenity .What starts in a small, quiet border town, ends on the Badlands of Montana. It starts off with the Charismatic, handsome but dark character Kit (Sheen) meeting a naive young girl Holly (Spacek), and falling in love. Aaaaaahhhhhhhh...... All is well until Holly's father finds out, and forbids Holly to see Kit. Thus, Kit calmly kills the father, and he and Holly jump town into the woods, where they stay, until Kit shoots 3 more bounty hunters out for him. Thus begins a spiral of murder and travel through Montana. It is disturbing, because it displays (graphically, might I add) Someone very calmly killing seven people over the space of a week, in a bleak, stark landscape. The music is excellent, the acting sublime, and the message clear.
Enjoy, and think.... |
| Rating | | | Date | April 06, 2005 | | Summary | Badlands: souls as featureless as the landscape | Content
| Kit is a talkative loner, working as a garbage man in a small Oklahoma town. Having decided he's "thrown enough garbage for one day," he slips off and heads, I suppose, for home. Along the way, he spies Holly, a young high school girl, twirling a baton in her front yard. Holly lives in a two-story Victorian with her widower father, who has never quite gotten over the loss of his wife nor ever loved his daughter half so well. Kit flirts with Holly and eventually persuades her to see him on the sly. But her father soon discovers their tryst and tells Kit he never wants to see him again. That same day, or a day later, Kit goes to Holly's home. She and her father are out. So he sneaks in and begins to pack her suitcase. Unfortunately, Holly and her father return to find Kit in her room-in a brilliantly shot sequence where we learn, in an actor's turn and in a turn of the camera, that we ought suddenly to be afraid. And before the father can leave to call the authorities, Kit shoots him. Then he and Holly set the house on fire, pack the car and set out on a roadtrip, inspired by the 1958 killing spree of Carl Starkwether and Carol Ann Fugate.
The film's narrative is initiated and regularly boosted by Holly's voice-over, read from her diary in a kind of alienated deadpan absurdity. It is the point where the characters marry with the modern. In an era of disconnectedness and alienation, teenagers often adopt a pose of world weariness when looking for their burgeoning social selves, somehow blind to the belligerent silliness of adopting such a pose after having actually known so little of the world. Kit and Holly live in a perpetual state of make-believe, circumscribed by their unknowing. They want to speak from some meaningful experience, but haven't any. So they borrow phrases and attitudes from books and magazines and movies but which, of course, are made absurdly comic when said in such soulless, humorless uncomprehending. Kit, for example, shoots Holly's father in a gesture that simple doesn't mean anything. It is but another unaffecting consequence of the pose. Moreover, as they ride away, he stops at the high school and sends her in to get her books so that she won't fall behind, as if the murder had been just another item, like any other item, on Kit's to-do list.
And all this is magically complicated by the wash of our own visual poetry over thoroughly unsettling circumstance-the hallmark, I think, of all three pictures that Malik has written and directed. There is the sweet, childlike orchestration of Karl Orf's "Musica Poetica" that covers sequences of Kit and Holly literally at play. A flat, featureless landscape resembling the souls of its protagonists, a-glow in the orange and purple of the plain state's dawn and twilight. Nature is a great redeemer in Malik. A certain natural splendor will always be, will persist, in a world that occasionally wears the stain of humanity. And there is an odd moment as they are racing in the dead of night across the badlands towards a mountain they had earlier seen in the blue fade of aerial perspective. A song begins to play on the radio. Holly reaches to turn it off, or over, but Kit suddenly pushes her hand away, breaks in a smile and identifies the singer as Nat King Cole. They stop the car. And in the utter black of the city-less plains, they slow dance to the music in the bleach of the headlights. |
| Rating | | | Date | March 30, 2005 | | Summary | Fugitives in love | Content
| In Terence Malick's classic "Badlands", aimless Kit (Martin Sheen) falls in love with Holly (Sissy Spacek). In order to be with her, Kit kills her father (Warren Oats) and runaway together. All they want is to be alone together, but the law is looking for them, so trigger happy Kit shoots his way from Oaklahoma to the Badlands of Montana. It is no secret that this film was heavily inspired by thrill-killers Charels Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate. What suprised me was that it never offered any explaination as to why Kit killed so casually, except a vauge notion that he was doing it to be with Holly. Holly seems awful passive about it all, at least until the end. Sheen and Spacek are wonderful actors, and so they lend credibility to the two lowlifes. Malick shhots his film in the tradition of John Ford, lot's of wide shots of the praries, especially nice touch was the mountain that Kit is chasing (but never gets to) at the end; a visual representation of the goal he'll never reach. Maybe a bit long at times (and that hurts a 90 minute movie) but still, it is rightfully considered a classic. |
| Rating | | | Date | February 16, 2005 | | Summary | Soundtrack for the Terrence Malick 1973 movie "Badlands"? | Content
| I'll bet when you saw the comment "Soundtrack remastered in Dolby Digital 5.1" you hoped the DVD contained a bonus seperate audio soundtrack, which the producers could have probably fit on the disk - well, it does not - I would have rated this 5 stars. Unfortunately, there never was a soundtrack album produced for the Terrence Malick 1973 movie "Badlands", which lists at the top of its music credits "Musica Poetica - Carl Orff & Gunild Keetman"; so, the set below is as close as it gets. In addition to "Gassenhauer" (Street Song), the haunting main theme bookending the movie and throughout, at least 4 other "Badlands" pieces can, however, be found on this 1994 BMG release 09026 68031 2 (RCA Victor Red Seal) 6-CD box set version of the original Orff/Keetman recordings done between 1963 & 1975 on 10 LPs. The others I have found so far are: for Dad's dog lesson - "Musik zu einem Puppenspiel" (Music for a puppet play) on CD 3 Trk 5 [2:27 - 4:24]; for Kit's stockyard job - "Xylophonstucke" (Xylophone pieces) on CD 3 Trk 7 [0:00 - 1:50]; for the burning house - "Passion" on CD 4 Trk 8 [2:43 - 4:55]; and, for the bounty hunters' just deserts - "Hexeneinmaleins" (Witches multiplication table) on CD 6 Trk 19 [1:48 - 3:45]. I would appreciate a review posting in this forum by anyone who discovers additional Musica Poetica "Badlands" tracks.
Please see my other reviews of the "True Romance" CD Soundtrack, "Musica Poetica", and "Orff Schulwerk". "True Romance" was written by Quentin Tarantino as his tribute to the Terrence Malick movie "Badlands", and Hans Zimmer's original compositions are a homage to the "Badlands" Musica Poetica gems. If you have not seen it, watch it not only for the great music, but also for the knockout cameo scenes with Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, Brad Pitt, Val Kilmer, Gary Oldman, Tom Sizemore, Chris Penn, and James Gandolfini, not to mention the strong leading performances by Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Michael Rapaport, and Bronson Pinchot.
Here's the full soundtrack details for Badlands (1973):
"Musica Poetica"*
by Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman
"Trois Morceaux en forme de Poire"
by Erik Satie
Theme "Migration"
by James Taylor
"A BLOSSOM FELL"
Written by H. Barnes, H. Cornelius, D. John
Performed by Nat "King" Cole
Courtesy of Capitol Records
"LOVE IS STRANGE"
Written by M. Baker, B. Smith, S. Robinson
Performed by Mickey and Sylvia
*Some tracks are on "The Best Of Carl Orff", BMG 75605 51357 2, 1999:
..Carmina Burana - highlights - about half the 1 hour long masterpiece.
..Schulwerk (School work) - excerpts (collaboration with Gunild Keetman)
.... Rundadinella
.... Guten Morgen, Spielmann (Gunild Keetman)
.... Der Wind, der weht
.... * Gassenhauer (Gunild Keetman)
.... Wer da bauet an der Strassen
.... Malaguena (Gunild Keetman)
.... C'est le mai
.... Carillon
.... Sommerkanon
.... Lügenmärchen
.... Stücke auf Ostinato (Gunild Keetman)
.... Schlaf, Kindleinm schlaf
.... * Passion
.... Tanzstück (Gunild Keetman) |
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Picture 01 (20)
