Badlands. Terrence Malick, 1973.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #651, released 2013. English language. Runtime approximately 94 minutes.
Summary: Trashy attitudes about animals’ lives.
Details:
1) A dead dog is found in an alley by two garbagemen and there is a joking exchange about eating it 1:44-1:49.
2) Kit’s new job in a cattle feed lot is shown 10:30-11:07. We see cows being force fed by ramming an enormous pipe far down their throats, Kit shoving cows in the heads with his boots while they are eating, and a black cow on its side apparently dying.
3) A second scene focusing on animals occurs 12:33-13:13. First, Holly throws her (living, real) pet catfish in the garden to die and we see it gasping and flopping. At 12:58 we return to the feedlot where Kit is nudging a dead cow with his boot. He then walks across her stiff body as though testing a mattress.
4) Holly’s father shoots her dog at 15:42, and the scene concludes with the dumping of a duffel bag containing the dog’s body into a river at 16:10.
5) Kit’s fails to catch fish with a net, and we see him shooting into the water at 37:20. There is no depiction of dead fish, merely the evidence of his violent intentions.
The tube force feeding of the cows is accurately portrayed (that is, sadistic and unnecessarily brutal), and the entire feedlot/catfish sequence (10:30 through 13:13) can easily be skipped if you so choose. During this time, we hear narration by Holly that she and Kit are falling in love. She likes him because he doesn’t care much about sex and doesn’t fault her for being quiet and lacking personality. She comments that their lives and the world in general are full of strange things. Her apparent belief that animal deaths “just happen” rather than being the consequences of direct actions sets the stage for the emotionless human murders that follow.