“Love is Strange”: Terrence Malick’s “Badlands”

In the wake of 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde, Hollywood became fascinated with stories of young lovers on the run, fleeing from crimes they’d committed in the heat of passion. I’ve finally seen one of the best of these, 1973’s Badlands. It was based on the actual story of drifter Charles Starkweather, who was executed at age 20 for murdering eleven Midwesterners circa 1958, and his companion, Caril Ann Fugate, who threw in her lot with him at age fourteen. Grim subject matter, to be sure, but this film marked the directorial debut of Terrence Malick, whose stop-and-start career has produced a modest number of exquisite feature films, sometimes with twenty-year gaps between them. (Today, if IMDB is to be trusted, he’s busy with short films and documentaries.)

 Though Malick’s output is rather limited, his films have a visual and emotional impact that makes them memorable. The loss of innocence is for him an essential subject, no more so than in Badlands, which is narrated by Sissy Spacek, at the beginning of her long career.  (Though about 22 at the time, she easily comes across as the fifteen-year-old Holly, the film’s stand-in for Caril Ann Fugate.) Her voiceover narration, a frequent feature of Malick’s work, is delivered in the flat, matter-of-fact, almost shell-shocked tones of someone who can’t truly process the horrors she’s seen. Holly, we feel, is a good girl at heart, but one so benumbed by boredom and loneliness in a small Dakota town that she easily falls in with the dangerous Kit Carruther (Martin Sheen) because he resembles James Dean. It’s a strong reminder of the power of movies to shape young lives.

 Bonnie and Clyde robbed banks for money and for excitement. Kit, a philosopher at heart, has no particular use for money, but he finds his excitement in aiming his pistol and firing at whatever (or whomever) gets in his way. This includes his sweetheart’s father, and several good Samaritans. Lean and hungry-looking, Kit is tender to Holly but quickly brutal to everyone else. The role is a strong follow-up to Sheen’s screen debut as a thug terrorizing the occupants of a late-night New York subway car in 1967’s The Incident. Looking back on it, his persona in those early days was a far cry from the gravitas of his more recent roles, like that of the U.S. President in The West Wing.

 In what was to become typical of Malick films, most of the action is set outdoors, in a lush natural setting. The production designer was Jack Fisk, a future Oscar nominee who would marry Sissy Spacek the following year. (Remarkably for a movie couple, they’re still together, living on a farm near Charlottesville, Virginia.) Fisk started out making low-budget features for Roger Corman, as did Badlands’ ace cinematographer, Tak Fujimoto, who went on to shoot both The Silence of the Lambs and Star Wars.

 Another Malick predilection is to score his tough-minded, deeply contemporary movies with elegant classical music, conveying a sense that the story somehow exists outside of time. Badlands contains snippets of Eric Satie and Carl Orff, along with a dreamy Nat “King” Cole ballad and Mickey & Sylvia’s period-appropriate “Love is Strange.”   

 That last is a key takeaway from Badlands. Love definitely leads Kit and Holly in strange directions. The film’s title, by the way, refers to a bleak but picturesque region of South Dakota that the characters see in the distance but never quite reach. An apt metaphor, of course, for the lethal aimlessness of life for two drifters who don’t quite know what they want or need.

 

Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain – Trying to Save One Corner of the World

As the world lurches from crisis to crisis, we tend to forget what happened in Bhopal, India on December 3, 1984. The explosion at a Union Carbide pesticide plant that released clouds of dangerous chemicals into the air quickly killed some ten thousand locals. It also launched a health crisis that continues to this day, as mothers genetically affected by the blast give birth to severely damaged children. Bhopal was, in fact, the worst industrial accident of all time. And there’s no end in sight.

Lest we forget, Indian pediatrician-turned-filmmaker Ravi Kumar has co-written and directed Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain, a 2014 independent feature that spells out the events leading up to the tragedy as well as its cost in terms of human lives. Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain was screened last week for the press and budding Hollywood activists as part of Kat Kramer’s seventh annual Films that Change the World series. Featured guests included the very eloquent Tim Edwards, an Englishman who’s become the executive trustee of the Bhopal Medical Appeal. Edwards reminded his listeners that Bhopal, where thirty tons of poisonous gas spilled out into a densely populated slum area five miles square, was “a disaster with a beginning but no end.” In the absence of true leadership from the government of India and from Union Carbide (which has shrugged off all claims of responsibility), Edwards’ group has dedicated itself to founding medical clinics for those still suffering from what he likens to “chemical AIDS.” Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain, in dramatically depicting the scope of the crisis, should encourage people of good conscience to support these fund-raising efforts. (Live-streaming of this event throughout the globe is one way in which current technology is helping to spread the word.)

One stand-out in this film is its cinematography, capturing the color of daily life in a small Indian city, and then presenting in excruciating detail the full sweep of the death and destruction. The original plan was to focus chiefly on an actual crusading journalist (portrayed by Kal Penn) who—aware of sloppy safety practices at the Union Carbide plant—predicted the disaster to come. But someone wisely recognized that this story belonged chiefly to the victims. A wonderfully likable Indian actor named Rajpal Yadav becomes the everyman figure whose determination to support his family puts him in the thick of the Union Carbide operation, which was intended to bring to an impoverished community much-needed jobs.    

Yadav’s character is an innocent, but there is plenty of blame to go around. The Indian plant managers are portrayed as so oblivious to basic safety precautions that they shut off the essential cooling systems to save money. Then there’s the big boss of Union Carbide. As portrayed by Martin Sheen (who’s legendary in Hollywood for taking on major social issues), he’s an affable chap, one who genuinely wants the best for Indian workers—but will always put the needs of his company first. (This balanced portrait of the late Warren Anderson, who was personally devastated by what his factory had wrought, is apparently quite accurate.)

As Stanley Kramer’s daughter, Kat Kramer works hard to bring a progressive social consciousness to these events. That’s why this year she inaugurated an award honoring actress and social activist Marsha Hunt, who was present in all her nonagenarian glory. The still-elegant Hunt spoke movingly: “To be thanked for what gave me so much joy in my life is kind of crazy.” But I noticed that much of the evening’s press coverage went to the film’s co-star, Mischa Barton, for her plunging neckline. Ah, Hollywood!