Knight of Cups

Dir: Terrence Malick

2015

**

The perfume ad continues. Seriously though, Terrence Malick was once something of a legend, a genius recluse, a mysterious master film maker that, like the 'Queen of the Night' orchid cactus, only bloomed every so often when the moment was right. The twenty years between Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line seemed like an eternity, there was a sizable gap before his next film but now they're as regular as clockwork and really quite nauseating. Film critic James Hoberman once said that 'Where other movies have fans, Malick's produce disciples", and I truly understand that. Malick is clearly a great thinker (it's all he did for two decades) and his film do get more and more beautiful to look at. I dislike existential films immensely but that isn't the only reason I disliked To The Wonder and Knight of Cups though, KOC being ever so slightly more bearable than TTW. No script is fine by me. No storyboard? No problem! Make the actors earn their money, I'm totally with him there, point and shoot has always been my philosophy when making films but, and it is a big but, the film has to then be suitably structured back in the editing room. Knight of Cups is so dreary and devoid of life, the viewer will either desperately look for hidden meaning or something they might have missed or just switch off altogether. Christian Bale wasn't given a script or a character profile and didn't know what the film was even about and it really shows. The film is basically him walking about a perfume/car commercial/postcard looking really confused. I don't buy the whole 'visual poem' thing either, it is a couple of half ideas thrown together, it wouldn't surprise me if the synopsis was written after the filming had been completed. We're given a line from John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and told to get on with it, which is something I hate about modern films, it seems you can get away with making anything look clever just as long as you stick a quote by someone famous or half intelligent either before the film starts or before the end credits. Knight of Cups is actually a tarot card, as if the film isn't nonsensical enough. Malick has quite the eye, nearly every shot is stunningly beautiful and composed brilliantly but his technique of 'torpedoing' (placing certain people, usually doing something unique, into the shot without the actors knowing before-hand in order to get a reaction) looks incredibly amateur, not to mention cheap. It's when oil painting meets YouTube and any magic that was there is lost. This 'let’s see what happens' experiment fails to excite, entertain or indeed inspire, it looks nice but has the depth of a contact lens in my opinion and I think Malick (and everyone else involved) is better than this.