Knight of Cups (2016)

Knight of Cups (R)

"In his Cups"

Traipsing through the weird world of Hollywood, a depressingly lost scriptwriter goes through a series of relationships (sensual, family and business) to attempt to find meaning in his meaningless life in auteur Terrance Malick's obtuse yet seemingly autobiographical film, Knight of Cups.

In Tarot, the Knight of Cups signifies change, excitement and romance, a bringer of new ideas.  This does not accurately describe the film.  However, in Tarot if a card is dealt from the deck upside down (which as inferred by the poster for the film it has been), then the card is inversed and means the opposite; trickery, naivete, redundancy, tedium.  Now we are getting somewhere.  For all its faults and obtuseness, it makes Knight of Cups the most appropriately (and interestingly) titled film of the year, and probably the most obviously intimate look into the persona of Malick.

Using the terms and storylines from Medieval pilgrimage literature and the Tarot, Knight of Cups has more of striking visuals and cohesiveness than Malick's previous film To The Wonder.  The mere semblance of a plot gives Knight the upper hand, as does having a much more varied and stellar cast (Christian Bale stars but rarely talks and in turn is spoken to by Cate Blanchett, Brian Dennehy, Natalie Portman and others).  Yet again, Knight of Cups is another rumination on life, as Tree of Life was before it, a pastiche of the past, a montage of the moment.  Images shutter by, some breathtaking, some mundane, some surprisingly on low res video cameras instead of the gorgeous film photography of his previous efforts.  Also different is the use of Nature, often a dominating force in Terrance's films.  Here the Knight of Cups seems separated form the natural Earth until the very end of the film, he appears lost in a  world of marble, concrete and asphalt.  This intentional shift in tone works on your subconscious, but only in context to the rest of Malick's oeuvre and therein lies it's biggest problem.

For those steeped in Malickian lore, for those illuminated by ancient pilgrimage literature or well versed in the symbology and subtext of the Tarot (the movie's chapters and their repsective characters are all named for cards in the deck), even for ones such as these Knight of Cups would be a difficult movie to recommend.  And so your average American will have no interest in this Facebook moments-like tableaux of ex-girlfriend's speeches, family squabbles or extravagant Beverly Hills parties.  Terrance Malick's best work has an indescribable tone that can deeply affect the viewer and it just so happens that his movies are getting more and more specific in the audience it reaches for (himself mostly, but without a doubt there will be a small minority this movie will sing to).  It has neither the visual panache of Tree, the humble humanity of Thin Red Line nor the youthful destruction of Badlands and yet there are touches here and there where it does almost meet them.  How it was made, how a script was never shown to anyone, how the actors were unknowingly lead through these moments, all those interesting things are secondary to it's directors reason to make it, and the notoriously reclusive Malick certainly isn't going to tell us that.

For all the world Knight of Cups feels like a cryptic memory of a past life that someone outgrew and now reminisces about in some other part of the world with some other people who could never fully understand.  It's the kind of thing Terrance Malick does best (in fact the only one who does it at all), even if we also will never understand it as much as we'd like.

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