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Patrick Whittaker

 

No Future : Nihilism inBadlands and Kids.

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Patrick Whittaker

No Future : Nihilism in Badlands and Kids.

Although the movies Badlands and Kids appear at firstglance to be birds of a different feather, at their heartthey have a common theme which – paradoxically -- canbe summed up as ‘nothing'. Each film explores youthalienation and what happens when segments of society donot buy into the social consensus. In other words, whatvalue do people place on society when society places novalue on them?

The most striking difference between the two movies isaesthetic. Whereas Badlands finds a languid beauty inthe nihilism of its characters, Kids presents an ugly messthat has few if any redeeming features. The first issomewhat reminiscent of Ragnarok - a creeping,inexorable entropy. Kids, on the other hand, resembles aminor apocalypse.

Stylistically, the two films could not be further apart.The look and feel of Badlands puts one in mind of any

number of westerns as well as films such as Bonny and Clyde (USA, 1967) and Thelma & Louise (USA, 1991).It is essentially a road movie without the usual upbeat –and possibly misplaced – optimism we associate with thegenre. It's as if someone has taken Easy Rider  (USA,1969) and stripped it of its guts, reduced it to a well-nighmeaningless sequence of events.

The story is told from the point of view of Holly (SissySpacek), a 15 year old girl, whose main characteristic is

passivity. She and her boyfriend, Kit (Martin Sheen),embark on a killing spree – or rather Kit does. Holly justseems to be along for the ride. Kit's explanations for hismurderous acts are weak and half-hearted. He probablydoesn't even believe them himself, nor does he need to.Witness, for instance, his rationale for shooting somebounty hunters in the back as recounted by Holly :

… he'd overheard them whispering about how they were only interested in the reward money. With lawmen it would've been different. They were out there to get a job

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done and they deserved a fair chance. But not a bounty hunter.

And later when he guns down his best friend Cato(Ramon Bieri) in cold blood :

Kit never let on why he'd shot Cato. He said that  just talking about it could bring us bad luck and that right now we need all the luck we could get.

Clearly Kit is no great shakes as a moral philosopher. In the end we are left unable to sympathise with

either Holly or Kit. The director, it must be supposed, is happy with this state of affairs. At theheart of his movie lies a great, empty expanse that reflects both the Badlands of the title and the lives

of his protagonists.As we journey through the wilderness with Kit and

Holly, we stumble upon few insights. The only lesson to belearnt is that people sometimes do bad things becausethey've got nothing else to do. Or – to put it succinctly –shit happens.

This same ethos lies at the core of Kids. In this film,almost nobody looks to the future except in the most

superficial way. The only character to give much thoughtto what lies ahead is Jennie (Chloe Sevigny). The ironyhere being that she may literally have no future because –after her one and only sexual experience – she has testedHIV positive. Unlike the other protagonists in both films,her destiny truly is beyond her control.

The story of Badlands (based loosely on real events)centres around two young people who have nothing intheir lives. The desert they travel through in an effort to

evade capture is the desert they were born into.Whichever way they look, the landscape is dull andunchanging. They occasionally glimpse something more –the lights of a city, the mountains of Montana – but thesethings are alien to them and they know in their heartsthey will never escape the Badlands.

Similarly, the youngsters in Kids seem resigned to theirlot. The difference being that they don't seem to knowwhat their lot is. It's as if they are in their own Badlands

but are so dwarfed by their environment they have nosense of where or who they are. Whereas Holly and Kit

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embrace their catastrophe, the kids are engulfed bytheirs.

Towards the end of Kids, Jenny is in a taxi looking forthe boy that infected her. She quietly promises herself,

 ‘I'm not gonna die'. It is the one life-affirming line in theentire film.

So here we have two films that share little in commonbut their theme -- kids with no future. It is the manner inwhich they handle their subject matter that makesBadlands and Kids as diametrically opposed as any twofilms can be.

© Patrick Whittakerwww.coldfusion.freewebtools.com trashman97@hotmail.com