Movie Buzzers was invited to a special screening of Knight of Cups at Metrograph (7 Ludlow Street, New York City), a new specialty cinema venue that is opening in March 2016. Following the screening there was a reception sponsored by Kim Crawford Wines. Movie Buzzers will soon have a feature on Metrograph and what it offers New York’s moviegoers.
Writing anything about a Terrence Malick movie – let alone a review – is pretty much as insurmountable of an exercise that someone who writes about film can do. Taken on its surface, Malick’s latest film Knight of Cups is a beautifully shot movie about a mostly-silent Hollywood screenwriter whose life is made up of a series of dysfunctional relationships, particularly with women. But Malick’s films are poetic movements in a way that most other filmmaker’s movies aren’t, and whereas that setup might make an entertaining film from just about any talented director Malick’s take on the material is far more experimental. While “entertaining” certainly isn’t the word to describe Knight of Cups, it is as thought-provoking as any of Malick’s other films.
Rick (Christian Bale) is a Hollywood screenwriter – something that isn’t directly mentioned and hardly addressed, but it is what it is – and Knight of Cups is divided into eight chapters, each based on a tarot card and depicting a relationship in Rick’s life. Several of the characters, such as Rick’s brother Barry (Wes Bentley) and father (Brian Dennehy), appear in other chapters. Moments of happiness do not last for the quiet, unsettled Rick, and the death of another brother named Billy in the past seems to the chief reason for Rick’s inability to find happiness despite his ongoing pursuits of pleasure and makes him unable to connect with anyone in a meaningful, long-lasting way.
One of the aspects of Knight of Cups that most appealed to me was how Rick (and the film’s narrative) aimlessly drifts from woman in his life, inevitably using them for a period of time before moving on to another one. Rick’s reckless, self-destructive behavior – which ties into the meaning of the tarot card of the title – appears to leave most of these women worse off, particularly his ex-wife Nancy (Cate Blanchett) and lover Elizabeth (Natalie Portman). By the way, it’s worth noting that Blanchett and Portman’s characters appear for no more than 15 minutes each in the film despite their co-star billing.
Much of this use and abuse of women is personified in a boisterous, pigheaded character played in the chapter titled “The Hermit” by Antonio Banderas, who holds court over a wild Hollywood party as he touts his sexual achievements (women are “flavors” to him, and he’s often in the mood for different ones). Stories of Hollywood’s unsavory treatment of women are nothing new, but rarely has it been portrayed as raw as it is in Knight of Cups. Curiously, Jason Clarke appears as one of Rick’s friends at the party and it’s interesting to see two actors who have portrayed John Connor in the Terminator franchise on screen at the same time.
Visually, Knight of Cups is stunning. Masterful cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, who has worked with Malick since The New World, manages to even photograph the Vegas scenes to give the city a false elegance it doesn’t deserve. As per Malick’s other films, there are various unconnected shots cut into the film, such as several involving a dog jumping into a pool in unsuccessful attempts to retrieve objects, that are beautifully photographed even if you can’t figure out what they’re doing in the film. Naturally, these shots make the film meander in both good ways and bad — though I often liked what I was seeing, I couldn’t stop myself from checking my watch multiple times.
For as experimental of a filmmaker that Malick is, Knight of Cups disappointingly seems like a repeated experiment. There are obvious elements from Tree of Life and To The Wonder in this film’s DNA, and Malick’s next film, Weightless, will probably seem similar as well because it involves much of the same cast and crew. Malick fans will find a lot to pondering here, and likewise people who don’t “get” Malick are unlikely to find anything to change their opinion on his films in Knight of Cups. For me, it was a visual experience that is as much of a cautionary tale as any other “dark side of the film industry” movie that you might see.
If you can accept the fact that you need to bring as much to this film as Malick himself did, Knight of Cups might cause you to consider how your own reckless actions might affect those whom you love.
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