Terrence Malick is such an influential director that it is easy to forget that he has only directed nine films over the past 42 years.  (One of those ten, Knight of Cups, will be released later this year.  Two other are currently in postproduction.)  He has received Oscar nominations for The Thin Red Line and The Tree of Life but, for me, Malick’s best work remains his directorial debut, Badlands.

Badlands is based on the real-life murder spree of Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate.  In 1958, 20 year-old Starkweather murdered 11 people in Nebraska and Wyoming.  14 year-old Fugate was with Starkweather at the time of the murders but has always claimed that she was Starkweather’s hostage.  After the two of them were captured, Starkweather was sent to the electric chair while Fugate served 17 years of a life sentence.

In Badlands, 25 year-old Kit (Martin Sheen) is a garbage man who has a huge chip on his shoulder.  One day, Kit spots 15 year-old Holly (Sissy Spacek) outside, twirling a baton.  Kit starts to talk to Holly, who thinks that he looks like her favorite actor, James Dean.  Kit and Holly start dating.  Holly’s father (Warren Oates), a sign painter who has never recovered emotionally from the death of his wife, tells Kit to stay away from his daughter.  After Kit murders her father, Holly joins him in fleeing from the scene of the crime.  With the police and bounty hunters chasing them, the two young lovers head across the midwest and leave a trail of bodies in their wake.

Badlands sticks pretty close to the facts of the real-life Starkweather/Fugate case but, at the same time, it is definitely the product of Terrence Malick’s artistic vision.  It is interesting to see how, even in his first film, Malick was already exploring the themes and using the techniques that would later distinguish both The Thin Red Line and The Tree Of Life.  Like those two films, Badlands is full of majestic scenery, contrasting the beauty of nature with the ugliness of humanity.  Like all Malick films, Badlands also features a narrator.  Holly tells us her story but, in contrast to the philosophical narrators from Malick’s later films, Holly speaks exclusively in romantic clichés and delivers her narration in a flat, unemotional style.

When we first see Holly, her white shorts, blue shirt, and red hair add up to an all-American tableau.  When Holly falls in love with Kit because of his resemblance to James Dean and then either justifies or ignores every destructive thing that he does, she is predicting the rise of our current celebrity-dominated culture.  Meanwhile, Kit is so determined to be James Dean that he even imitates Dean’s performance from Rebel Without A Cause while talking to the police.

Badlands is one of Malick’s most accessible films.  Sissy Spacek is amazing as the childlike Holly and Martin Sheen has probably never been better than in his role here.  And, of course, you have the great Warren Oates in the small but crucial role of Holly’s harsh father.  Badlands is an American classic and still the best film of Terrence Malick’s legendary career.