THE LAST DANCE

There's an exquisitely melancholic moment in Terence Malick's Badlands (1973) when Kit (Martin Sheen) and Holly (Sissy Spacek), two young lovers on the run from the authorities after committing a multi-state killing spree, find themselves reaching the end of the road in their murder-fueled romance.

Late at night, holding each other in the lonely desert to the sound of Nat King Cole's A Blossom Fell playing on the car radio, they slow dance as Kit laments that he doesn’t have a voice as good as the crooner—and what success he might have had with a song if he did. The notion of a different life suddenly occurs to him, and though we know he's a cold-blooded killer, his all-too-human response to the lilting ballad creates a bittersweet counterpoint to the trail of bodies he has left behind on his bloody rampage.

At this point, neither lover knows for certain when and how their journey will come to an end, though perhaps they intuitively sense it's approaching fast. Their growing notoriety is catching up with them in the media, and their chances of evading the law are dwindling. We know it's only a matter of time before they are caught.

Unlike the more propulsive, life-giving music by Carl Orff that plays throughout the film—as well as Mickey and Sylvia's Love Is Strange in the lovers’ brief "Garden of Eden" forest camp sequence—Kit and Holly's dance to A Blossom Fell feels like their world of youth and chaos is fading into something more sober and adult. Soon, when the light comes, they will be found, and their murderous romance will end forever.