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University of Kent / ARTS STUDIO
Badlands (1973, USA) Terrence Malick
Professor Elizabeth Cowie
Badlands is based on the true story of the Charles Starkweather and Caril-
Ann Fugate murders in 1958. In the film, Martin Sheen plays Kit, a James
Dean lookalike and petty criminal working as a garbage collector, until he
meets Holly (Sissy Spacek), a 15-year-old school student. Her father’s
opposition to their relationship leads Kit to kill him, and the couple go on
the run through the US ‘badlands’; Kit robbing and committing further
brutal murders.
What is so interesting is that the story is shown through flashback,
narrated several years later by an older Holly, so that we watch a ‘then’ time
but hear about it in a ‘now’ time of the film’s showing. But there are
discrepancies between what we see and hear in the flashback to the past,
and what Holly tells us happened, so that we may ask ourselves whether
she is really trustworthy. With this questioning, we become aware that
another ‘narrator’ has enabled us to perceive this discrepancy that we may
ascribe to Malick as director and writer, but which also emerges in the
editing, cinematography and added music, drawing us to actively engage
in understanding what the film is telling us.
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