Terrence Malick doesn’t respect our time. That’s the only conclusion I can draw after a press screening of Knight of Cups. Even when his movies are critically lauded, such as with The Tree of Life, I think most of us in the general public emerge at the end wondering why critics tricked us into sitting through it. We’re probably supposed to simply stare in wonder at the hodgepodge quilt of scenic imagery and beautiful movie stars to which he points his wandering wide-angle lenses, but, mostly, I’m just bored.
In Knight of Cups, Rick (Christian Bale, The Big Short) works in Hollywood. The people around him tell him he’s successful, that he’s the guy. They never actually mention what he does in the industry and we never see him doing any of it. Instead, we watch as he walks through a variety of environments: the dessert, a movie studio backlot, a torn down house, Las Vegas, a museum, a string of gorgeous modern houses with surprisingly bare walls, and colorful parties full of pretty people. Occasionally, Ben Kingsley (Self/less), who never appears in the movie, but is credited as narrator, whispers narration ripped from the pages of the 1678 Christian allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress. His reading sounds properly Shakespearean and lends an air of importance to the proceedings, but never provides the thread necessary to turn the film into a narrative of any kind. Instead, it’s just a layer of antiquated metaphor piled on top of Malick’s disconnected visual tone poem.
The one thing the film seems interested in exploring is Rick’s prolific romantic history with a variety of women. Halfway through the running time, I came to understand why none of his amorous relationships had any staying power. Every time Rick is alone in a room with a woman, instead of having a conversation, they walk around the room posing for each other for awhile, then they either chase each other around the room and roll around on the bed or slowly touch each other’s faces. Each relationship is interesting for about a minute and a half.
Each of the actresses portraying his love interests bring at least a bit of new energy to their tiny sections of the film, especially Natalie Portman (Thor: The Dark World) and Imogen Poots (She’s Funny that Way).
Cate Blanchett (Carol) shows up for 10 minutes to trick us into caring about Rick for a second by giving us the only hint of backstory and character exploration in the whole movie. She actually manages to say a few lines of dialogue on camera as well, an impressive feat when Malick prefers to have most of the characters dialogue run over images of them walking around and projecting moodiness at each other.
All things considered, this is not a particularly fun way to spend two hours. With no narrative story in sight there’s no way of telling where you are in the movie, making it feel hopelessly endless. Each scene seems to start with a aimless Bale trying to get his bearings and figure out where he is now and what he should be doing. Like Malick drove a couple recognizable faces to some fantastic location, gave them no direction or sense of what they were trying to accomplish, and told them to “Exploooore. But no words. Just physicality.” The whole thing feels like an interminable acting class exercise. One I wish I’d skipped.