Movie Review: 'Knight Of Cups'
By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - It's time to talk about the emperor's new clothes. Or lack thereof.
Reclusive auteurist writer-director Terrence Malick gained so much artistic credibility and respect with such early films as Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978) that he's been given a pass of late with such recent films as The Tree of Life (2011) and To the Wonder (2012).
Each had moments or elements that allowed us to see the overall film as uneven or erratic. But Malick's talent at the keyboard and behind the camera remained revered.
His latest outing, however, the fragmented Knight of Cups, set in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, is so outrageously awful, it doesn't redeem itself in any way, offering nothing but the flaws and excesses that have characterized portions of his last couple films.
So let's label the film for what it is: pretentious, self-indulgent to an absurd degree, boring, unwatchable.
This is a Terrence Malick movie that seems like a Saturday Night Live parody of a Terrence Malick movie.
When you hear yourself muttering "Let me outta here" in a film's first few minutes and it only gets worse after that, you're doing some serious suffering.
Knight of Cups, its title taken from the tarot card of a romantic adventurer who follows his emotions, is navel-gazing without the navel, a stream-of-consciousness meditation that goes nowhere slowly.
With Malick's current contempt for conventional narrative values -- which translates, let's face it, to contempt for the audience – it's impossible to make the case that this form of impressionistic storytelling-with-no-story is viable.
If non-characters walking through a non-plot looks like glorified home movies and smells like glorified home movies and tastes like glorified home movies, then y'know what?
It's glorified home movies.
And this head-scratchingly obtuse contemplation of...something or other... that considers itself a visual poem takes two hours to arrive where it began and completely wastes the talents of an accomplished cast that includes three underemployed Oscar winners.
Yikes.
Oscar winner Christian Bale is the focal character, a successful Hollywood screenwriter called Rick who spends the movie walking around as if in a daze, staring off into space, and searching for an authentic identity.
And if you've ever wondered whether spiritual yearning by itself was a spectator sport, you'll get your definitive answer here.
It's not.
Rick thinks about the women in his past and present life: Oscar winner Cate Blanchett as his ex, a physician; Oscar winner Natalie Portman as his present squeeze, who is married and may or may not be pregnant; and Imogen Poots, Teresa Palmer, and Freida Pinto as other women with whom this very, very popular guy cavorts.
His thoughts are further intruded upon by his memories of the brother he lost and by his recall of unpleasant exchanges with his father (Brian Dennehy) and the brother he still has (Wes Bentley).
Rick seems to disapprove of the hollow, hedonistic Hollywood lifestyle even as he lives it, and we get a glimpse of it – well, more than a glimpse – at a glamorous poolside party thrown by a wealthy showbiz star played by Antonio Banderas.
Of course, Malick can't be bothered concocting meaningful exchanges between and among the hollow characters he has populated his film with, so he dispenses whatever exposition there is via whispered voiceovers, most of it from Bale's Rick. In other words, the light knight rises, but not to anywhere interesting or meaningful.
The last two of the several chapter titles that we see are "Death" and "Freedom." By the time they appear, you'll find yourself longing for either.
So see it if you dare. And expect something worth 1 star out of 4. Hey, at least you may catch up on your sleep. Although as dreamlike movies go, this one's a nightmare.
