Badlands

The film begins and ends with Holly (Sissy Spacek). At once causal, cool and in her own dreamlike world, she describes and comments in voiceover on the events that force her to flee with her boyfriend Kit (Martin Sheen) from a small town in South Dakota to the Badlands of Montana. Her tone remains calm, even as the circumstances surrounding their escape get ever tighter, as the police are soon hot on their tail – the film is based on an infamous series of murders that took place at the end of the 50s. They don’t just lose their way in the great expanse of the American landscape, they lose themselves. In later films, Malick returned to several themes from his debut, whether the coexistence of human violence and natural beauty or the thin line between (the American) dream and nightmare. The device of the voiceover also became a key part of his narrative toolbox from this film onwards. (mg)