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Reviews
Badlands (1973)
Malick's National Geographic Film on the American Tribe
With his debut film, Badlands, writer/director/producer Terrence Malick presents a fictionalization of the story of the Starkweather-Caril Ann Fugate murder spree that took place throughout the Midwest in 1958. Malick's work focuses on the 25 year-old James Dean wannabe, Kit Carruthers, played by Martin Sheen, and the freckled 15 year-old, baton-twirling Holly Sargis, who is skillfully played by Sissy Spacek. The story is narrated by Holly in a monotone, pulp romantic literary style. The couple meets in when Kit walks up to Holly who is twirling her baton in the street. Soon after, the two "fall in love," but Holly's father, played by Warren Oates, refuses to let Kit, who was formerly a garbage collector and has taken on work as a ranch hand, see his daughter. When Kit goes back to see Holly after her father had told him to stay away, he is further reprimanded for his steadfast disregard for the father's wishes, and responds by hastily shooting Holly's dad in the stomach. In an attempt to avoid the law, the couple burns the house down with a recording of a staged suicide note by Kit. The film follows the two empty souls on their run from the law and the half-dozen killings that ensues. Both characters are played as emotionally immature social outcasts. Kit is devoid of any sense of guilt with the numerous killings he commits, and Holly is just as emotionally empty, watching her father die without the slightest hint of psychological disturbance. Presenting his story from a distance -- both a visual and psychological distance from the characters and their unflinching "blah"-ness as Holly describes it -- Malick forces the audience to see the film, but not connect directly with it in any way. In Badlands, Malick uses the distance from the characters and the theme of emptiness to present an objective realism that operates as a counterpoint to the deception of the Hollywood morality and psychology which fell through in the complex times of social upheaval and violence that surrounded the 1970's generation. Most widely accepted as one of Malick's greatest contribution to film with Badlands is the beautiful photography most often attributed to Tak Fujimoto. The film has received comments on how the beautiful imagery is incongruous with the emptiness throughout the film. Environmental awareness was another social issue that made itself apparent in the 70's, and Malick's film is untarnished except at the hands of humanity. His odd close-up of the ugly grinding of the trash truck at the beginning of the film works to foreshadow the theme of man's ugliness that makes itself known throughout the film. In the same scene, Kit finds a dog dead by the side of the road, a brutal image against the beauty of nature Malick points out early on in the film. Malick's shots all work to lead us to an acceptance of the harshness of humanity, and by having beautifully framed, colorful, Maxfield Parrish-esquire (as Kael somewhat contemptuously describes it) landscapes destroyed in the audience's eyes by images of violence in the beautiful wilderness. This commentary on the brutality of man on the environment is furthered with the burning of Holly's house after the murder of her father. Shown in all its blazing glory, the flames of the fire suggest man's use of the untameable force of nature for destructive purposes. Similarly, Malick's focus on animals throughout the film, with several close-ups during the Swiss Family Robinson tree-fort in the wild scene, seems to imply the bestial nature of Kit's killings, and in turn presents the violence that occurs as a necessity for survival in Kit's eyes. Malick's approach to the film, in this sense, closely resembles an educational wildlife documentary. The narrator and the characters are unable to convey their emotions to the audience, and the distancing of the audience has a powerfully objective effect; we are forced to try to understand these wild animals. We end up examining ourselves without the preconceived notions of morality and psychology ever-present in the Hollywood films that failed to address the concerns of the generation and attempt to translate the characters' actions into human emotions as we would with the attack of an alligator on a pack of hydrating gazelles or a group of apes sitting around picking at themselves and signing to kittens. Kit kills Mr. Sargis in what is shown as if part of an accepted courting ritual. Kit is an animal and dies like an animal at the hands of the other animals in the film, us. Kit is chained to a leash after his capture while the onlooking guards ask him questions and observe this exotic rarity, the sociopath. It is also of note that Malick probably knew of Charles Starkweather's media title of the "Mad Dog Killer," a title that even furthers the interpretation of the film as an observing of animal action-reaction to threats. There is no implied statement on the rightness or wrongness of his death, but it is generally accepted that his death is necessary. These visuals are so compelling and the storyline is there so that we unconsciously lend the occasional emotion to the actions of the characters, but tend to accept the actions as necessary and place no judgment on the harshness or brutality of Kit's otherwise unexplainable actions.
Badlands is, as Kael says, an "art thing," but Malick's unnerving absence from the film -- not counting his actual appearance as the man in the white hat who leaves a message at the rich man's mansion -- is the major success of the film. His ability to separate himself, the characters, and the actions entirely from the audience is off-putting for the traditional critical approach, but Malick uses this separation extremely effectively to open a wide forum of discussion for the condition of humanity in the height of social and political unrest. I liked it.
Dear Wendy (2005)
What a cool idea... but that's just the idea...
So I saw the trailer for the film a while back and checked it out thinking it was a pretty neat idea for a film. I was let down, however by the supreme lack of intelligent conversation within the film itself. The idea for a film about the fetishism of guns and the failure of and ideal is something that could've been nice if well executed. I mean, the dandies with music by the zombies... that's just bad ass. However, the few stylized moments in the film are not well integrated into the structure of the film at all, first off. The narration by Jamie Bell is completely unconvincing, the story-line is ridiculously clichéd and pretty inconsequential in the end. It's an interesting discussion, but an unnecessarily facile one in this film. Von Trier's aggravation with the 'America' as represented by the second amendment right to bear arms is constantly present, as the film attempts to render such regard for power etc... a completely outdated and useless ideal, whether the straight-up naming of the pistols Lee and Grant or Bell's character being placed between a Confederate and American flag (both faded on the side of a barn), the discussion is heavy-handed and in the end fairly uninteresting. And when the film does try to pull off the cool, it's so rigid and (again) clichéd that it just comes off as film school jackassery. None of the characters are very well-developed, instead depending on the all-too overstated plot to carry the film. When viewed as a metaphor for the Dogme 95 film movement though, the film could possibly take on a different meaning. The good intentions of this new discipline (owning and caring for a gun), the vow of chastity, the pay-offs with the new discipline, but the eventual decay and ironic use of the very thing held so highly against them... Maybe that's shallow, but I think that it could possibly be more universally a statement on the hypocrisy of or cycle of the ideal taking over and turning on it's own principles in the end. I'm not sure that that makes the film any better but it's more interesting than the over-worn gun violence idea... to me at least.