Badlands

The damaged youth of Sheen's character. The beautiful innocence of Spacek's character. This film could not have been more perfectly cast. There is a complexity to the relationship between these two people. A level never fully evolved throughout the film. This is the film's greatest weakness- an inability to really delve into that which brings these two together and so far apart.

This is Terrence Malick's first feature film. I have been wanting to view this film for a number of years. Always pushing back the "right time." I can't say I find the film particularly worthwhile. The filming is beautiful. Malick's desire to capture nature is heavily at work. In fact, most of Malick's significant themes are at play from the very start of his work.

Badlands ties very closely to Days of Heaven. Both films deal with men on the run from the internal. Fighting their way out of themselves and into the external. Malick's two follow up films, The Thin Red Line and The New World, are complete opposites of his first two films. The Thin Red Line and The New World are much more focused on fighting ones way deeper inside while running from the external.

I am happy to have completed Malick's filmography up to this point in time. I find him one of the ten best directors in the history of filmmaking. While I won't say this is his finest moment, it certainly is a nice glimpse at where genius grew.

B-