Knight of Cups

Saying that Terrence Malick is an acquired taste is so disturbingly accurate, that it almost feels like a lie.  There are times of the year when only certain films will do.  I don’t mean seasonally; I mean that some films just need a long time in-between viewings.  In the case of Malick, his films, in my experience, need years to pass between finding the will to sit down and experience them.  I say experience because his work is not something you can casually enjoy, but significantly let wash over you like the way it feels to stand in the first cool breeze of autumn after the blistering pain of summer’s heat. Now if that last sentence sounds pretentious, then you need to figure how much it bothers you before even agreeing to watch a Malick flick.

Malick’s work is notorious for not being heavy on the plot, if there is one at all.  Most of his work is about the way he presents an idea combined with the philosophical analysis of said idea.  The Thin Red Line may take place during World War II, but that is just loud background noise to Malick who prefers to find the quiet, to show it’s audience how beauty and pain are both a difference to war.  That’s not to say other World War II films don’t do that, but no one does it like Malick.  The New World (his most underrated to me) tells the story of Pocahontas.  A story that most of Americans know, yet he finds so much more in presenting it’s story through the prism of discovery and communication.  His films may have familiar characters, however, he’s less interested in what happens to them, rather than where there place is in time, space, and nature.  And he always care for the complexities of the human spirit.

That’s why when he makes non-linear work like Tree of Life, because to him, it truly makes no difference to something more straight forward.  With Tree of Life he chose to mostly forgo a plot, and do what excites him most as an artist, explore.  Explore life’s most sought after answers in collages of beautiful images, profound pieces of dialogue, and soaring music that, when he’s on the top of his game, can be combined into something so stirring that it makes you feel alive.  The feeling of being moved by poetry, or music, for the very first time.  That’s why I enjoy Terrence Malick.

So why did I hate Knight of Cups    ?

I hated it because, while Malick is a brilliant artist, even he can be susceptible to a sameness that can push him into self-parody.   He once took twenty five years off in between films.  He’s now made four in the last six years.  That doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but in his unique case, I think it is.  Only because the quality of his work needs more patience to create that most.  Knight of Cups isn’t bad because it has the bare bones of a story, but because it has a lazy emptiness to it’s presentation.

The film is about a screen-writer in L.A., played by Christian Bale, who despite taking place in all the debauchery of his industry’s parties, and city’s best night clubs…is an empty man.  Despite that he gets to have sex with one gorgeous woman after the other…he’s an empty man.  Getting the theme?

As his father narrates the film, we are told of the story about a knight who went in search of a pearl, but ran into the wrong people, and had his memory wiped…and became an empty man.  His father relates that story to his son’s hollow life.  And this singular idea is force fed down the audience’s throat with every passing minute that it becomes tiresome long before the film ends.

Apparently Bale was never shown a script, unlike the other actors. So while they speak in muted tones around him, or narrate over the images, Bale can only react and watch.  It’s an experimental way to get a hollow performance out of an actor and it works, but not to the desired effect.  Bale looks more bored than empty, and more like someone that should have lines.  The film continues this juxtaposition in it’s constant imagery of nature and city life, always at odds, except with a main character that can’t find peace in either.  I understood that, but it didn’t move me.  It did nothing for me.  I understood why Bale’s character kept bringing every new woman/muse in his life to the beach to look out upon the ocean…he wants to get back to the basics of life (water clearly represents life in the film as fountains, full or drained keep making appearances).  Find his happiness that eludes him in the baron and dull studio lots.

Some of the performances by the women are quite good, especially Cate Blanchett, but they end up meaning as little to the film as almost everything that goes on in it.  Sure it has it’s moments of beauty, but no where near enough to slog through the rest. I’m sure there are musical cues that I missed that were supposed to mean something, but even if I did understand every reference to literature or music, I wouldn’t care.

I hope Malick can show me something that stirs my soul once again.  If not, I can always enjoy a cool breeze.

Or a beer.

Grade: D