"Knight of Cups" Review

Terrence Malick's long-gestating feature, Knight of Cups, has finally been released theatrically in the United States. Though nobody can ever fault the visual splendor of Malick's work, some of his late stuff can be hit-or-miss from a narrative standpoint. That's essentially the case here. 3-time Oscar winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki shoots the hell out of this thing, but Malick's script makes it unclear exactly how our protagonist evolves or the precise message we're supposed to take away from his journey.

The film chronicles a period of several years in the life of a Hollywood screenwriter (Christian Bale) as he undergoes an existential crisis alongside his decrepit father (Brian Dennehy), deadbeat brother (Wes Bentley) and six different women. With abundant voiceover and striking visual language, Knight of Cups is likely as close as we'll ever get to Malick's 8 1/2.

That's not a bad thing, per se. Malick is arguably as distinctive a cinematic voice as America has today, but patrons unversed in his style may find themselves in too far over their heads to make sense of what he's trying to say here. For those willing to let visual poetry wash over them, however, Knight of Cups offers a veritable Roman bath of experimental imagery wrapped inside a non-linear dramatic structure. For this reviewer, Knight of Cups falls somewhere in the middle. Malick's storytelling style is hard not to admire, especially in today's corporate blockbuster culture. But it's equally difficult to reconcile that the emotions we're supposed to feel as an audience go largely unrewarded as Rick (Bale) careens across L.A. from one adventure to another. In the end, he still feels like the same disconnected prick he was at the beginning. Should we really buy the idea that he's ready to start his life over? Is that not what he's been trying and failing to do for the entire film? Perhaps Malick's real message is the folly in all of this and, in turn, offers a critique of the Hollywood "reboot" itself in the sense that nothing really changes no matter how many times you start over. After all, at one point Rick is tapped to write a screenplay for "the next big Hollywood smash." Can it really be as cynical as all that?


B-