Knight of Cups

As we grow more and more tired of dull as dishwater, predictable, structure obsessed nonsense, we come to love films that want to use the medium to take us on a trip. I see nothing wrong with enjoying beautiful imagery, stunning music and a bit of emotional self analysis for a couple of hours. Or would you rather the story by numbers of say, Joy? I may not have loved this as much as Thin Red Line, or Tree of Life, But am I happy to spend two hours with Mr. M? Indeed I am. Anyone who has led anything verging on an interesting life will have plenty to ponder as this washes over them. This was like meditating. It's freeing to let a sense of the story wash over you without having some contrived plot shoved down your throat. I let the cinema invigorated and cleansed.

Knight of Cups was a very different subject than I was expecting from director Terrence Malick. Few directors delve into the raw emotional content that carries us through our daily narrative. Most of his films approach the viewer from the very abstract to the rather mundane. I was quite impressed with most of his previous work, but I failed to grasp what was going on here.

Christian Bale confirmed in an interview with The Guardian, a few things that people should know before watching this film. Mostly that the director did very little in terms of actual direction and scripting. Every scene in this film was either unscripted or improvised. Actors were playing off each other and had very little to go off of scene by scene.

Bale plays a successful Hollywood Screenwriter, who is haunted by his traumatic past and fails at most of his relationships. Not out of poor decisions but because he seems lost more than anything. The events that lay before him are strange and somewhat unconnected, but the recurring theme of his affairs, love interests, and strange breathy narration (which is fairly typical for Malick's films), make this film somewhat of a repeating loop of the same events over and over again. You're left a bit confused at the end wondering, what was this film about. There are some beautiful shots in it, yet still a difficult movie to follow.

A rather contemporary, if unguided effort on the director's part, and falls somewhat flat next to his more spectacular body of work.

5/10

Let's get one thing straight; Terrence Malick's films aren't exactly everyone's cup of tea. They're arguably the most unconventionally crafted movies from a well renowned director out there. Audiences normally criticize him for being highly pretentious and having no meaning in his work. But for some, his films represent everything we love about the artistic medium of motion pictures. With his latest offering, "Knight of Cups", Christian Bale stars as a screenwriter eager to explore his seedy persona in the dreamlike whereabouts of LA.

The film swoons along with a plethora of illusory montages, with Bale being Malick's primary focus as he trudges through the streets of downtown L.A., bizarre nightclubs swarming with vibrant dancers, house parties exclusively for the rich and meditative walks through the desolate wastelands of the Las Vegas desert. For the majority of the film he cuts a forlorn figure, basically looking to find some sort of significance of his life and finding the answer to faith. And in typical Malick fashion, none of what we see on screen is straightforward and we're left to determine our own meaning on the gorgeously composed images. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki once again has a vice like grip on how to bring an ethereal visual lyricism to surroundings.

Malick is one the very few directors who really embraces the beauty of artistic filmmaking. They may not follow a clear cut narrative, but there's no doubting that there's an alluring poetic rhythm that's present in his films. The key is for the viewer to figure out what Malick is attempting to portray. And even if you can't, just go along for the experience. Simply put, if you enjoy his films, you'll most likely find some sort of reward with this.

more clueless, going-nowhere pretentious. Trying so hard to find some unnecessary answers with a film to play out meaninglessly by a guy who miraculously relocated or misplaced himself in lot of big-deal events or scenes, either looking up to the sky or jumped off from a pier into the sea for no obvious purpose but spur-of-the-moment childish behaviors, or entangled himself with some females in close contact, flesh against flesh, intimate but without profound romantic feelings at all, or woken by a sudden earthquake, moronically and aimlessly roamed around inside his room with bare feet littered with shattered glass, then when the aftershock tremors hit again, escaped downstairs, still without shoes, looked up to the sky, saw chopper passing, sirens....on and on, situated himself in desert, movie shooting locations, swimming pool, bed for no purpose. The old voice narration....then with some white hair guys mingled among younger ones....on and on, without any meaningful purpose. lot of wide angled nice scenes, sunsets.

The whole movie failed to provide the viewers with any obvious intention but hollow camera works. Trying so hard to look deep but ended up with a big NADA! A pathetic copycat tried so hard to look like the heir of Fellini and his 8 1/2 film but failed miserably except in colors and wide-angle lens. A total clueless waste of resources and viewers' time and eyesight.

When we go into a Terrence Malick film, we generally know what we're in for: a spiritual journey into Man's soul through unconventional, yet beautiful cinematic means. Malick's films are mostly unscripted and plot less, instead using nature to assist them iin creating a narrative by use of both visceral and symbolic imagery. And like Werner Herzog, there seems to be an almost divine force on their side.

Then there's Knight of Cups: A cinematic farce masquerading as profundity; an excruciating exercise in self indulgent banality. I couldn't believe what was unfolding before me. It was just empty--Lubezki's cinematography, the voice over, the character's-- just empty. A borderline Malick parody. It was almost as if the film was made by a machine, or perhaps some sort of alien being attempting to recreate human emotion. I literally felt nothing while watching it.

The only justifiable reasoning I can fathom on how Malick directed this film, is if he was trying to give the audience a hands on experience of the superficiality and mundanity of the protagonist's life. If this is the case, then I suppose the film is technically a success. If you can call that a success. I'd say the filming of paint drying would be an equally effective treatment of the subject.