For Those Who Think Young

Badlands (1973)
directed by Terrence Malick
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

Holly is a girl, all of fifteen. Kit might be 25 on paper but he courts Holly like a boy in high school. And you know me; after Deadhead Miles, I thought I'd have something real smart to say about Malick's considerably less obscure directorial debut. Kit's worldview may be a lot smaller than Cooper's, but both men are wide-eyed for wonder. Kit, like Cooper, spends a lot of time in his own head, answering his own questions the moment he asks them; Kit's banter with the officers who arrest him is a one-man routine.

But Alan Arkin was 38 when he made Deadhead Miles, though he doesn't look a day under 40. For Badlands, Malick cast 32-year old Martin Sheen and 23-year old Sissy Spacek. Instead of wise, the two leads play innocent, and that's the difference. Look at the tree fort Kit builds or his shyness about sex. I'm always happy when someone like Malick mentions Treasure Island as the inspiration for a love story. No one forgets Long John Silver, I guess, who listens to young Jim Hawkins when no one else will and finds his way home against the odds to some distant corner of the sea.