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Malick's Badlands is a low-key masterpiece

IN 1958, a young misfit called Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend Caril Fugate went on a murder spree through Nebraska and neighbouring states.

Anywhere But Here
Anywhere But Here

IN 1958, a young misfit called Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend Caril Fugate went on a murder spree through Nebraska and neighbouring states, killing at least 10 people, including Fugate's father.

In Badlands (Saturday, 8.35pm, M Masterpiece), Terrence Malick has changed the location to South Dakota, but the story is the same. Sissy Spacek plays the adoring Fugate, here called Holly, and Martin Sheen is the psychopath with an unfocused hatred of society who kills people at random.

Badlands, released in 1974, marked one of Hollywood's most impressive directorial debuts, a masterpiece told in a low-key, matter-of-fact style. Malick has made only five films since, including Days of Heaven and The Tree of Life. But for power and realism there has been nothing to compare with Badlands.

Spacek starred years later in Todd Field's In the Bedroom, one of the cinema's great studies of parental grief. It was a performance matched by Nicole Kidman in Rabbit Hole (Tuesday, 2pm, M Masterpiece), an intelligent and moving drama on a similar theme directed by John Cameron Mitchell. Kidman is Becca Corbett, whose marriage to Howie (Aaron Eckhart) has been falling apart since their small son was knocked down and killed by a careless driver.

Rabbit Hole offers a blend of mystery and emotional desolation that is sharpened and relieved by humour. Kidman deserved an Oscar, much as Paul Newman did for his performance in The Verdict (Thursday, 8.35pm, Fox Classics) as a boozy, washed-up attorney who takes on the Catholic hierarchy in Boston in a medical malpractice case. Sidney Lumet directs from a screenplay by David Mamet, and Newman has never looked more wretched, less glamorous or more convincing.

In Anywhere but Here (Sunday, 8.30pm, M Drama/Romance), Susan Sarandon is a divorced Wisconsin schoolteacher whose 15-year-old daughter, Ann (Natalie Portman), wants to be an actress. Ann knows little of her real father, has no time for her stepfather and a healthy contempt for her mum. Can the two be reconciled as they drive from Wisconsin to Beverly Hills? Wayne Wang (Smoke, The Joy Luck Club) directed this charming mother-and-daughter road movie, aided by warm and touching performances from the women.

One can only assume that Japanese director Nagisa Oshima made In the Realm of the Senses (Sunday, 7.35pm, World Movies) with the intention to shock and shatter taboos. By any test, he succeeded. The story concerns an adulterous innkeeper and a nymphomaniac ex-prostitute whose bizarre sexual practices this column forbears to describe. Since Oshima is a serious artist, one must suppose that this weird pornographic spectacle has a serious purpose - a study of obsession, perhaps?

CRITIC'S CHOICE

Badlands (MA15+)
4.5 stars
Saturday, 8.35pm, M Masterpiece

The Verdict  (M)
4 stars
Thursday, 8.35pm, Fox Classics

Anywhere but Here (M)
3.5 stars
Sunday, 8.30pm, M Drama/Romance

Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/malicks-badlands-is-a-low-key-masterpiece/news-story/c57aba72118dfe362fcf26db67d93ba1