Film Style in Badlands

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Film style in Badlands. Badlands is a film with a very particular style. It sets a very neutral and smooth mood of mystery, peculiarity and at peace with nature through its use of structure, patterns of technique and the salient techniques used in order to tell a story of the criminal escapades of a young couple. In my essay I will explore how this techniques are used to set this mood and why it has been done in this way. The storyline of the film is conventional of its genre. The character of Kit murders many people who are in his way, including his girlfriend’s father. However, it’s unconventional in the way that it tells the story. This is done through the organizational structure. The movie opens with the characters being introduced and falling in love. This is shown through the narration of Holly who often tells the story with no emotion and in a very neutral way. It is also done through the use of montages of images of him at work and her in her everyday life, than the transition from their ordinary lives to their killing spree is created through a montage of Holly’s house in flames in which we see her toys and the things in her room burning which clearly signifies her loss of innocence. From then on, the movie is told through a series of events, it breaks all the conventions of the crime genre because it is slow paced and has very little action, when there is a shooting, we are not shocked and neither are the characters, it is almost as if it had never happened and as if it didn’t matter. The fact that the structure of Badlands is so neutral tells us a lot about the nature of the film and the greater meaning. The story does not seek to explain or justify their actions; it is so neutral in it’s structure that it detaches the viewer from the story. We neither dislike or like the characters and therefore are not quite sure if we believe their actions to be
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