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.

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.

Some random thoughts while watching this pretentious stinker: Film students correctly screen and study the works of Fellini and Antonioni and so did Malick, but ripping them off is inadvisable.

I saw "Badlands" at its NYFF world preem in 1973 and was a big fan of TM through his next one "Days of Heaven", but....he ended up a hack as witness here.

Compare careers to Conrad Rooks -as fiercely independent minded if not more so with 2 interesting features to his credit "Chappaqua", plus Herman Hesse's "Siddhartha". No idiot Malick Kool Aid drinking producers to back further follies for him, however.

Key ripoff: the great Scandi filmmaker Peter Watkins who invented the "You are There" first-person camera filmmaking technique for fictional, historical subject matter - wildly overdone by Malick with wide angle distortion added.

Ultimate indie pioneer John Cassavetes used improvisation for rehearsals and prep to invent a unique filming style; Malick uses improvisation as a lazy self-indulgence.

Film Festival-itis: making movies to be "consumed" on the antiquated, dating back to the '30s and '40s of Venice and Cannnes, international film festival as exhibition venue circuit, pandering to the gatekeepers of same: selection committees and junket-style critics, as witness the empty "eroticism" (not) thrown in as chief fetish of a "festival junkie".

Brain-dead stars: many a big name attracted to this no-script, no- nothing project in order to boast "I worked with Terrence Malick" and then spout gibberish in the inevitable BTS bonus interviews on DVD.

Film School Error 101: The Shot: when I first became a film buff over 5 decades ago I was fascinated with the "striking shot", a Bertolucci or for that matter Antonioni composition or moving camera that stuck out - the opposite of crafting a real, functioning feature film where both camera-work and editing (and SPFX especially) are ideally invisible once a filmmaker has matured. It's not the shot (battle) that counts, it's the film (war).

Antonioni, not Clapton or Kilroy, is God syndrome: not just the ending but the endless expanses of emptiness, as mentioned by loyal production designer Jack Fisk, not symbolic but merely undigested Antonioni imitation, see: "La Notte".

Elephantiasis: in the '60s I watched hundreds if not thousands of experimental film short subjects, screened at Midnight every Saturday and Sunday night at the local art theaters back in Cleveland, drawn from Ann Arbor and other regional festivals. Very educational and formative for a young film buff, with Stan Brakhage, George Kuchar and Ed Emshwiller raised to a pedestal for me. I'm sure Malick did too, but his big-budget feature-length imitations of same are embarrassing and a slap in the face of the many progenitors of the "underground movement" ranging from Maya Deren to even the '60s future pornographers -the Findlays. But he gets away with it, as current viewers and critics have no grounding in film history.

The Fellini scenes: TM couldn't resist "throwing a party" just like Fellini, but the maestro's parties have life and invention, while here we see clichéd Hollywood types milling about, over-wrangled by some anonymous assistant director, completely artificial in their groupings and movements.

Lastly, Bale as empty as the project. He gives new meaning to the derisive term "walk-through". And this is after, like the other hapless cast members, being given free rein by an absentee "director".

Rick (Christian Bale) is a successful movie screenwriter in Hollywood. He goes out with free-spirited Della (Imogen Poots). He goes to a tarot card reading. Barry (Wes Bentley) is his brother and Joseph (Brian Dennehy) is his father. Nancy (Cate Blanchett) is his ex-wife. Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) is another woman from his past. Tonio (Antonio Banderas) is a womanizer. Helen (Freida Pinto) is a model. Karen (Teresa Palmer) is a stripper. Fr. Zeitlinger (Armin Mueller-Stahl) is a priest. Rick moves through L.A., Vegas, and other places as he searches for meaning with various loves and hookers.

The acting is improvisational. The movie moves through L.A. and this world in a dreamlike fashion. Rick doesn't say much. The camera moves through his world like a spirit observing his life. In a way, it's a very fitting vision of LaLaLand. It reminds me of an IMAX movie I saw back in the 80's with disconnected action vignettes in Canada. It was disembodying but fascinating... for about thirty minutes. Luckily, that's how long that IMAX movie was. In this case, this movie lasts for two hours. One does check out sooner or later. I try to stay with it but it does get away from me a couple of times.

I'd seen some negative reviews of this film before I watched it but it's always hard to know whether they're written by people who just didn't get the film or whether they were written by people who are open to something very different who just didn't think the director succeeded in producing something of value.

Terrence Malick is indeed trying to take his audience in a different direction. He has turned away from the idea of telling a story to focus on the intangible emotional states of his characters, but I don't think many viewers will be able to relate very well to a character who is searching for meaning within an extremely privileged Hollywood social sphere, nor do I think we have much of an opportunity to connect to the film emotionally when it's edited like a music video. The film shifts wildly from one subject to another, the camera continuously in motion, as we tune in and out of incomplete conversations. Laid on top of the soundtrack throughout is slow, ponderous narration from multiple characters, often on subjects that have no immediate relationship to what is on screen at the time.

It is hard to sit through to the end. I did, though I caught myself daydreaming about other things on several occasions. It's hard to pay attention to something that seems to be making so little effort to hold it, but I was hoping it would go somewhere interesting. Surely the directer of a masterpiece like The Thin Red Line would pull something out of his sleeve to weave the chaos together, but then it ended.

Unfortunately, I can't tell you which group of reviewers I'm in. I might be the kind who just didn't get it or who aren't open to what Malick was trying to do, but I was thoroughly bored by it. I appreciate that he is trying something different, and this film is that, but I don't feel like I got anything out of it.

One group who might appreciate this film though is modern architects who put a lot of glass in their buildings. There is a lot of that.