Terrence Malick’s drama, “Knight of Cups,” is a unique film that feels more like a never-ending movie trailer or commercial shoot. It’s a series of mostly unconnected scenes that feature Bale in picturesque settings and desirable locations on a quest to find love and self through various adventures with different women.
Starring Bale, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman and Antonio Banderas, “Knight of Cups” is what is referred to as an experimental film -- one that examines alternatives to traditional cinematic methods and specifically in this case, explores a non-narrative form.
Bale plays Rick, a screenwriter living in Los Angeles and trying to make sense of his life. He has a successful career, but something is missing. Feeling empty and haunted by the death of one of his brothers, Rick discovers temporary escape from his troubles while running around with one Hollywood actress after another. The film is broken up into eight chapters, each named after a tarot card (except for the final chapter) and loosely based on Bale’s relationship with somebody in his life, usually his father, brother, or a woman.
The film basically features Bale meeting a girl, then fooling around and going on adventures to the beach, aquarium, different California mansions, or attractive locations like Los Angeles and Las Vegas; and then rinse and repeat with another girl. When not with a girl, Bale goes to work at a movie studio, wanders around in places like the desert, attends parties and interacts with his father (Brian Dennehy) and living brother (Wes Bentley).
While the film presents a star-studded cast and beautiful imagery/scenery, there is little to no real cohesive plot, or even much dialogue for that matter. Much of the movie is one video montage after another, mixed with different voice-overs, narrations and music. The film is loosely inspired by the 1678 Christian allegory, “The Pilgrim’s Progress” and the passage, “Hymn of the Pearl” from the Acts of Thomas, but without knowing this, the film seems almost completely random.
I’m not alone in thinking that this film resembles a long trailer or commercial of some kind. If you can just picture a two-hour men’s clothing or fragrance promotional video featuring Christian Bale on a California beach or in a Hollywood mansion with Natalie Portman and mostly soft music playing and a small narration (with minimal speaking) taking place, then this is “Knight of Cups” in a nutshell. If not a commercial, then an unfinished teaser video/trailer or documentary/behind the scenes video that never quite gets to the point.
During filming, there was an actual script, but Bale would reportedly receive no pages each day and other actors would only receive pages of a short monologue for that day. Similarly, Malick used a process called “torpedoing,” where a character from the cast would be used in a given scene, but the other actors had no idea the character would be in the scene and as a result, they were forced to improvise.
Bottom line, “Knight of Cups” is not your typical film and may have trouble attracting an audience. While I applaud Malick for expressing himself with a certain level of freedom that most films and directors could only dream of, the film simply gets dull after a while and doesn’t have much substance to continue holding your attention. The film provides a different kind of experience in the sense that viewers can think for themselves instead of being told what the film means, almost as if you were watching a silent film and creating your own dialogue, which is what Malick encouraged his cast to do.
This film spent most of 2015 on the international film festival circuit, previewing at festivals like Berlin International and Moscow International, and eventually on to Santa Barbara International, where it had its American premiere in February of this year. It was released theatrically in the U.S. on March 4, 2016 and releases in Dallas on March 11.
“Knight of Cups” is rated R for some nudity, sexuality and language. Running time is 1 hour and 58 minutes.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.
