Knight of Cups

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.

It takes a while of watching the movie before starting to appreciate it. However, the longer you get, the more it starts growing on you. Its modernistic style is certainly not for everyone - but the combination of beautiful pictures and captivating music as well as the subtle messages of the flick, is in my opinion brilliant. As with many modernistic pieces it requires that you as a spectator participate, which is very giving, that is, if you actually do it. Then you will experience the emptiness we as human beings have to wrestle with: the apathetic nature of just following the flow: the slumber we experience the moment we stop being active and stop shaping our existence. The movie is a reminder not to fall in slumber, but to wake up and see the pearl.

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

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.

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.