Critique on Badlands.

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E. Molinarez Prof. Valladares 04/27/2013 Critique of Badlands: Use of Sound I thought the music choice was very interesting for this film. In this movie Terrence Malick was wise in composing a demented understanding to the movie through the choice of his music. Malick understands how music works with images. In my opinion, he is a musical filmmaker like no other. Today sound is one of the richest sources of meaning in film and art (202). Malick used one of his two main characters, Holly, to narrate the film. Holly’s narration describes her adventures with Kit, main character, has romantic clichés is juxtaposed with the grim reality of Kits psychotic actions. In their world they are living a fantasy by carrying out psychotic acts. The film opens to the music of Carl Orff, a piece whose full title is too long to type out. It’s an extraordinarily famous piece of music that somehow seized the young spirit of youth perfectly. It was energetic, wild, free and unconventional. The music brings an edge to the film, realism with the diegetic and formalism with the non-diegetic sound. The increased realism brought on by sound inevitably forced acting styles to become more natural (207). Diegetic and non- diegetic sound in Badlands helped shape the way the we watched the film. The diegetic is heard by the characters in the film, which stresses the realism involved. In some scenes Holly provides voice over which gives the audience a vision into what is happening between her and Kit. Another example of diegetic sound is when Kit and Holly are in the car together towards the end of the movie. She goes to turn off the radio and he stops her and mentions he likes this song, Nat King Coles, “A Blossom Fell”. It cuts into the two of them dancing at night with the music in the background playing from the radio. They began to converse and the music lowers, then the

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