Peter Jackson's "Heavenly Creatures" compared to a tipical outlaw couple - in particular, Malick's "Badlands"

Essay by tattvaUniversity, Bachelor'sA, March 2003

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Introduction

When reading about Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures I could not help but begin comparing the film's two main characters to the typical outlaw couple, in particular, the couple we see in Terence Malick's Badlands. The more I thought about it, the more I began to realize that the two films can be equated to each other in many respects. At the very least, they both ultimately belong to crime film genre. Both films are also adaptations of real events, though both have been subjected to the director's artistic license, Malick's Badlands in particular as he goes as far to change some facts, including the fate of the movie's protagonists [in real life, Holly was not put on probation but sentenced to jail, also, her name was not Holly].

I see Pauline and Juliet in Heavenly Creatures as much an outlaw couple as Badland's Holly and Kit. Therefore, what I shall be trying to prove in this essay is how alike to two couples are.

First and foremost, however, I feel it is important to give a short overview of what each film is about.

Heavenly Creatures

Heavenly Creatures is a story of the friendship between two teenage girls: Pauline Parker, an outcast at her all-girls school in Christchurch, New Zealand, and Juliet Hulme, a new student at the school. The girls are brought together by their mutual inability to join in Physical Education classes due to illness and their love for Mario Lanza. Their friendship has remarkable intensity, intoxicating the girls, who rush everywhere with squeals and giggles; giddy with delight at the private world they have created together in their imaginations.

The friendship takes a knock when Juliet contracts tuberculosis and in quarantined, thus separated from Pauline. The friends begin to write each other long,