Badlands is like a malpais, but not volcanic. Though you could say Kit erupts fairly easily. Badlands never gets to Mexico, but if it had, they would call it tierras baldÃas. Malpais is also in Brave New World, whose title is the opposite of what this movie is about.
There’s a lot of kicking in Badlands, but it’s all show and spark, and the dusty terrain lends itself naturally to the action. Kit kicks a cow, a rock, a dog, various trash, the ground, a tire. He kicks the cow to know it’s safe to walk over, like a bridge. He kicks the ground so he doesn’t have to shoot Holly. He shoots a tire to make it look flat, but not to make it be flat. He shoots a football to save space in the car. He rams cattle with the car to save on ammo.
In everything in this movie there is desolation. There are no surprises. The editing is fluid. There is no climax or dénouement. The lost paradise of the love story is perturbed by a free violence. It is particularly obvious.
Quentin Terantino said he wanted to be like Terrence Malick so he made Pulp Fiction, but it turned out to be too judgmental. That’s why Badlands is so good and so stupid, together.
I would never call this movie “poetry” like it had been described to me. Maybe only in that the main characters refused to be sustained by normal life, but that their fantasies could not sustain them, either. I would call that normal life.
so good, j. i love the 'kicking' paragraph.
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