BADLANDS
Directed and Written by TERRENCE MALICK
This is a deadeyed, deadpan existential amorality play that has found a metaphor to make the 1950s come alive. At least it spins a superbly ironic fairy tale out of the emotional hibernation of those years in America, the simmering, collective detachment that could muffle hysteria and dull death.
The source material, unacknowledged, would appear to be the history of Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate, who went on a murder binge in 1958 that resulted in the deaths of ten people in Nebraska and Wyoming. Their motives were...