Film Review: "Knight of Cups" (2015).

"Fragments of a melancholy soul loathing the L.A. vacant life." This is Knight of Cups. This experimental drama film written and directed by Terrence Malick. Rick is a slave to the Hollywood system. He is addicted to success but simultaneously despairs at the emptiness of his life. A screenwriter living in LA tries to make sense of the strange events occurring around him.

In November 2011, the film was announced with Cate Blanchett and Christian Bale to star. In addition, the film would be shot back-to-back with Song to Song (2017), with production beginning in 2012. By late May 2012, Natalie Portman, Brian Dennehy, Antonio Banderas, Wes Bentley, Isabel Lucas, Teresa Palmer, Imogen Poots, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Frieda Pinto, Cherry Jones, Nick Offerman, Clifton Collins Jr., Dane DeHaan, Thomas Lennon, Joel Kinnaman, Jason Clarke, Shea Whigham, Ryan O'Neal, Joel Manganiello, Michael Wincott, Kevin Corrigan, Fabio, and Nick Kroll rounded out the film's cast. At the same time, principal photography commenced, and lasted for nine weeks. Filming took place throughout Los Angeles, California, and Berlin, Germany. While there was an actual script, Malick would write multiple new pages of dialogue for some of the actors and actresses and encouraged them to use whatever part of the dialogue they wanted. Despite playing the lead character, Bale received no writing for himself. This prompted Bale to try to sneak a peek of the other actors' and actresses' pages to ascertain what he could expect in each scene. He was only given the character description by Malick. Bale said that at the start of each day's shoot, he wouldn't know what would happen to his character. There was a lot of "let's see what happens" approach during shooting, which allowed "a lot of happy accidents". According to Bale, Malick didn't tell the actors and actresses what the movie was about. In addition to a traditional studio, the cast also recorded their voice-over work in unconventional places. Bale said that he, along with Portman, spent more days on the voice-over work for the movie than they did on the actual shooting. Bale later said that while filming, he was unclear about what the final film would actually be. According to Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, the script was between four hundred and six hundred pages long, but Malick told him not to read it. Instead, he wanted Lubezki to approach the movie in the manner of a documentary filmmaker. Lubezki said that he never shot a movie before without reading the script first. The film spent two years in post-production.

The performances, like the films, play like an undercooked pie that hasn't had enough time to cool and settle. They are a thing of great beauty, but not much more. Though, they are a mesmerizing, haunting study of immense beauty and insight, with characters that are constantly alive, pulsing with feeling and emotion in every frame.

Knight of Cups demonstrates Malick's gift for beautiful and profound images, but its narrative is overly somber and emotionally unsatisfying.

Simon says Knight of Cups receives:

Also, see my review for To the Wonder.