The voice of the silent

As I've been feeling intellectually impish lately, I recently decided to start re-watching the films of Terrence Malick and post some thoughts and insights on the ol' blog. Some of you may know that I'm a huge fan of Malick's, but there are aspects of his films which have remained foreign to me, things about them I couldn't quite grasp. In each there's a light cast on the struggle between man and nature, but I was never really satisfied with the conclusions I reached on it. I began rewatching the movies last week and have watched Badlands and The Thin Red Line thus far. I imagine most of this piece will be about Badlands, with a piece on TTRL to follow.

Something I've always noticed about Malick's films is the vantage he gives to his narrators and "main" characters, as in each of his films that role is played by someone with little to say in the world and even less effect in it. In Badlands, this role is shown through Holly, played by Sissy Spacek. In TTRL its Jim Caviezel as Private Witt and in Days of Heaven its Linda Manz as Linda. Whats most striking and bizarre for me about each of these characters is how they're all so helpless in society and yet unvanquished against nature, absolutely unattached and unafraid of whats to come. Society is constantly beckoning them to join the flock and get involved in the struggle and the drama, but they never seem to invest themselves. In many ways, it seems like they operate on a level outside of immediate experience, something less influenced by the moment and instead more thoughtful or pristine.

A good example of this is when Kit shoots Holly's father (played by my favorite American actor Warren Oates, for the record), and her reaction. To both Kit and Holly a door seems to open as a result, but for each character the road therein is very very different. For Kit the road leads to fame and stardom, an excitement and newness in life that heavily contrasts his former life as a garbage man, but remains similarly within the dregs of society. Holly's lifeless reaction to her father's murder takes a different tone, and throughout the movie it seems that she isn't necessarily an agent of her own change but is instead just along for the ride, watching how depraved humanity can be while at times seeming to wish that she could understand the emotions involved in what she was watching. Jim Caviezel's character from TTRL shares a similar disconnect from society, but his sense of human spirit seems to shine with a little more optimism than Holly's, who never really subscribes to whats around her in any meaningful way besides just wanting to leave once she knew the gig was up. She never asks or encourages anyone's death, she just follows with an appearance of helplessness but an interior dialogue which makes us think she understands more.

In all of Malick's films nature plays a prominent role. Whether it be human nature or that which surrounds us, at the end of the day these movies all seem to revolve around this concept that we're missing something, that we've made our conflicts too heavily based on humanity and have left out a major, indifferent and yet influential player. Kit and Holly are on the run, and they find themselves in a number of safehouses. Whats interesting is how they all interact and how little difference the characters find between their venues, here exampled by their fort in the woods and their time holed up in the mansion. Kit builds them the fortress in the woods and it seems so natural, the Swiss Family Robinson solution to their problems. The thing is, we never see these characters clamoring for anything while they're there, and this simplicity when wrapped in nature is a theme you see in TTRL and Days of Heaven as well. Richard Gere's character can't stand the bustle of the city, killing his boss and running off to the midwest. Jim Caviezel can't stand active duty, finding tranquility living with a remote tribe in the Pacific Islands. No matter how far any of these characters gets from society though, it always finds a way to draw them back in. Hunters come looking for Kit, Richard Gere schemes to steal a farmers money and Jim Caviezel is found by the Navy. For Malick, there must be some kind of undesirable poison in society, something so inexorable that actions against it are in some perverse way forgivable. The need and the pressure to get away manifests itself in all these characters, and all of them are surrounded by death. Its only with Kit's growing recognition of fame that he turns his back on these things, eventually finding the open wild too boring and perhaps not free enough to please him.

When Kit is arrested he is a monster, but the police don't treat him as such. As a garbageman, he knows that everyone's trash looks the same, that we're all as sloppy and disgusting on the inside. He's played his sociopathy like a fiddle, and the film takes an interesting tangent as it treats this piece of trash as something else. Because of his notoriety the cops admire him, basking in his fame, no matter how disgusting the reasons for it are. Kit is a mass murderer, and yet people want to know him just so they can say they've met him, as a conversation piece. I think this attitude of admiring the famous for fame's sake is something we can relate to all too well 30 years later. People want Kit's watch, his lighter, his pen, whatever memorabilia they can grab. They're honored to have it, honored to have been graced with the attention of a serial killer.

Malick obviously sees a sickness in society, one that's not reflected in nature. The sickness of corruption and greed is something entirely human, and while nature may be heartless it is not malicious. Kit and Holly don't come off in Badlands as the villains, but instead its the fervor and celebration surrounding the killings which is meant to disgust. Law enforcement is in place for our own good, and they do their job, but they're mollycoddled by the excitement just like anybody else. What is said about a culture and a people who admire these sorts of actions? Are we the villains for liking it? I can't say I found it insulting or disgusting in the least, meaning my pulse beats in tone with society. At the end of the day, I'm left asking myself, is this natural?