Knight of Cups (2015)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Knight of Cups (2015) – T. Malick

Beginning with The Tree of Life (2011), Terrence Malick has been using an impressionistic, almost cubist, approach to filmmaking that allow viewers only shards of narrative and images that jump-cut after only a minute or two.  Perhaps this is how he sees memory or even consciousness itself.  Add in the fact that Knight of Cups was apparently completely improvised, with the actors riffing on character sketches and occasionally selecting from lines that Malick wrote for possible use, and the experimental nature of the film should be clear.  The set-up sees Christian Bale as a screenwriter adrift in L. A. (stunningly photographed by Emmanuel Lubezki), absorbed with the hedonistic scene, but knowing that something is missing.  He may represent the younger Malick.  Across the film’s two hours, we get a running tally of the Bale character’s romantic entanglements (each shown briefly before moving to the next) and all the L. A. (and Las Vegas) hot spots you can shake a stick at.  Unfortunately, this does deaden the senses a bit, although both people and places are beautiful to look at.  The overall Tarot theme does not really lend any meaning to the proceedings (although I plead ignorance on this score) and it is difficult to feel that Bale has found inspiration by the end (even when the film rises portentously to imply that he does).  Nevertheless, I enjoyed letting the music, images, snippets of words, and various allusions (to other films, to what we know of Malick, to life) wash over me and thus, I can’t complain.  But one would hope that Malick can make a film that is less solipsistic with the same techniques.