BADLANDS

USA 1973 - DCP - 94 minutes, in English

Director, Producer, Screenplay: Terrence Malick

Cast: Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates

Print Courtesy: Warner Bros.

Saturday, July 8 3PM | MFC 1

Thursday, July 13 9:40 PM | MFC 2

“He was 25 years old. He combed his hair like James Dean. He was very fastidious. People who littered bothered him. She was 15. She took music lessons and could twirl a baton. She wasn’t very popular at school. For a while, they lived together in a treehouse. In 1959, she watched while he killed a lot of people.” This was the way Warner Brothers’ poster for Badlands introduced the cinematic genius of Terrence Malick to the world. From there, Malick was to make Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, and The Tree of Life, among others (and to receive a MIFF Mid-Life Achievement Award in 2000.) But in 2023, 50 years later, Badlands stands as an American classic, little seen at the time it was released; looking better than ever now. Sissy Spacek (another MIFF Midlife Achievement Award Honoree) and Martin Sheen star in Malick’s stunningly original first film, based on the Starkweather/Fugate serial murders. When young Holly’s father (Warren Oates) forbids her to keep seeing Kit, they kill him and set off into the woods, prairies, and plains of the American west to hide out. Scored to Carl Orff’s simple yet haunted and haunting Schulwerk, Badlands depicts their world as simultaneously innocent and horrifying, perhaps not unlike American culture in other ways. —KE