Rating: 4/5
Criterion Challenge 2022 | 7/52 | 1970s
Fifteen-year-old Holly Sargis (Sissy Spacek) moves to Fort Dupree, South Dakota, with her father after her mother dies from pneumonia.
Twenty-five-year-old Kit Carruthers (Martin Sheen) jokes about eating a dead dog he finds on the road. He’s a garbage collector, and the dog lay next to the waste bin.
While walking home, Kit spots Holly practicing the baton in her front yard. Kit introduces himself in his best James Dean impersonation. Kit continues to court (groom) Holly, telling her how adult she is and how she’s not like other girls her age.
This leads to him taking her virginity, which doesn’t feel like a big deal to Holly. Kit suggests crushing their hands with a stone to commemorate the event. When Holly suggests it will hurt, he says, “That’s the point, stupid.”
Holly’s father figures out that she’s been seeing Kit behind his back, so her father shoots and kills her dog as punishment. Kit sees her father, who tells him to stop hanging around.
Suppose I shot you? How'd that be? Wanna hear what it sounds like?
Holly’s father runs to call the authorities, but Kit shoots him. Holly runs to her father’s body.
Hey daddy? It's Holly. Are you going to be okay?
Kit leaves Holly to come to grips with her father’s death. He makes a recording, claiming that the two are committing suicide after killing her father. He leaves it playing on a loop while he douses the house in gas and lights it on fire. The two go on the run, heading for the badlands of Montana.
The film is a teenage nightmare — freedom from parents and rules, trapped in the endless running away. The way Kit kills — sometimes out of fear, other times at random — is horrifying. How Holly responds — matter-of-fact, unphased — adds a layer of unreality.
I gotta stick by Kit. He feels trapped.
Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen are perfect in their disconnection from reality. They feel earnest and vacant — every murder feels, at worst, like losing a game. But as long as they evade the police, the strange dream stays alive.
The film is Terrence Mallick’s first, and it already has several of his signatures. Most notably, Sissy Spacek’s voice-overs set the tone and convey just how detached Holly is.
Where would I be this very moment if Kit had never met me, or killed anybody — this very moment — if my mom had never met my dad — if she'd've never died? And what's the man I'll marry gonna look like? What's he doin' right this minute? Is he thinking about me now, by some coincidence, even though he doesn't know me?
The American dream is a violent man who takes what he sees as his, and the Proverbs 31 virtuous wife who quietly keeps the family together. The way to make a mark on the world is to collect trophies of memories otherwise forgotten — keepsakes and half-remembered tragedies.