BADLANDS: Terrence Malick’s “early, funny film”

“You know, when we showed [Badlands] at the New York Film
Festival—for the very first time—you could just hear a pin drop. No one
laughed. Now when Badlands is
screened, people laugh because . . . I guess our society has changed. But then, I
expected people to laugh at Badlands,
but when they didn’t it was very unnerving. Things were different then.”—Sissy
Spacek in the featurette documentary Making
Badlands

Often,
Terrence Malick’s cinema is pigeonholed as one of artful, beguiling, and obtuse
solemnity, and his most recent film To
The Wonder will probably do little to change that. But Malick’s 1973 debut Badlands is, thus far, the only film in his oeuvre in which humor is a significant component. Strange, since it’s
a lover-on-the-lam movie about a charming, sociopathic serial killer (Kit, as
played by Martin Sheen) and an affectless, somewhat delusional teenage girl
(Holly, as played by Sissy Spacek) that isn’t exactly an ultraviolent outré
black comedy like Man Bites Dog (1992)
or American Psycho (2000). But low-key,
dry, and absurd humor is a noticeable and well-woven element of Badlands which helps it play well with
contemporary audiences. If it isn’t a black comedy, then it is a singular and
timeless art-house crime drama infused with greyish-brownish comedy.

Malick’s
films usually have a contrapuntal nature, embodied by images,
intrinsically serious, that enhances the films’ themes: the sheer wonder of
the world contrasted with terror, fear and destruction, or a human drama dwarfed by the seeming indifference of nature. These characteristics are
evident in Badlands, but with humor
in the mix, much of which comes from Kit’s unusual behavior and Holly’s voiceover
narration. To those familiar with Malick’s other films but not with Badlands, the idea of a Malick film
being funny might seem odd. But considering that humor
generally depends on contrast or contradiction, to me it’s surprising
that Malick has yet to make another partly or completely comedic film. (Considering that Malick is reportedly a big fan of Zoolander, it seems that he still likes to laugh, even if the
majority of his directorial work doesn’t indicate that.)

*******

In Badlands, Kit says odd, tangential things like “I’ll give you a
dollar if you eat this collie” to a coworker when he finds a dead dog. He also
has a capricious collecting habit; for instance, after he deflowers Holly in
the outdoors, he carries a souvenir rock to commemorate the event, but, after
observing its heaviness, he throws it away and gets a smaller stone. And
throughout the movie Kit alternates between James Dean coolness and erratic
compulsion, making him charismatic and unnerving in equal amounts. “It
takes all types,” Kit often says, and his type is the sometime-murderous,
strangely comical Manic Pixie Dream Boy who does things like preening his hair
in the car’s rearview mirror while being pursued by law enforcers. He’s a
sociopath who can make you laugh.

In the
film, Holly’s toneless, diary-esque voiceover narration augments the
story and provides insight into the minds of Kit and Holly, but there are also a
number of moments in the narration that are humorous. At one point, while Kit is trying to
catch fish in a river as Holly looks on, she narrates the scene like so: “We
had our bad moments, like any couple. Kit accused me of only being along for
the ride, while at times I wished he’d fall in the river and drown so I could
watch.” At another point, as Kit and Holly’s stolen getaway car drives across a
barren landscape, Holly narrates, ““Kit told me to enjoy the scenery and I
did.” There is a deft quality to these remarks, and they’re only made funnier
by Spacek’s naïve and deadpan delivery. The comments also lend pathos and likeability
to Holly, a character who could have easily become an irredeemable, underdeveloped
cypher in the hands of a less imaginative writer and director.