Knight of Cups (Terrence Malick, 2016)

[Roscoe]

Opinions are gonna differ. One person's life-changing masterwork is another person's trite batch of perfume ad laziness.

[solaris72]

Sure. But there are more thoughtful and engaging ways to critique a film than contentless epithets like "perfume ad."

[Trees]

It's fascinating how some brush Malick off as if his work is dispensed from a candy machine for a couple of quarters. As if they are getting something about cinema Malick isn't. I'm not saying the film warrants universal praise. I'm saying the man knows what he's doing and is clearly far more complicated than your butterfinger, twix or if we're being classy bag of trail mix. Therefore if you're unwilling to meet him on his terms then why bother to watch his films? To criticize him for not meeting you on yours is lazy, unimaginative and as indulgent as what Malick is accused of.

I wonder how much of the vitriol this has received is due to it being 'A Terrence Malick Film'? I also wonder how people would react if Rick was lets say a high school principal, someone less resented than a Hollywood person? Or if the women who a lot of the film's feelings are channeled through were more plain as opposed to stunningly beautiful? The first two are distractions or as Malick would cut to, not seeing the forest for the trees. The third problematic, but explainable given the work's autobiographical bent.

This movie reminded me so much of La Dolce Vita with Rick an introverted Marcello. The women, the debauchery, the emptiness, the randomness of characters popping up, the music. People always run to the Malick/Tarkovsky connection, but I've always seen one with Fellini which has only been increasing with each film.

Malick is a lot of things, but I think the one thing everyone who has seen his latter work can agree on is, he's not a literal filmmaker. This was why whether it was reading Richard Brody's effusive praise or Domino's trite dismissal by either exalting or making fun of the portrayal of Hollywood was a head scratcher. It is a fundamental misreading of the film to describe it's essence as being about Hollywood.

Let's begin with the film's title, Knight of Cups. Leaving aside all the implications thru having an understanding of tarot. What does one associate with the word 'knight'? Noble, courageous, gallant, chivalrous, a sense of moral responsibility, protecting beautiful maidens but above all we see knights as individuals. When you think 'knight' a singular image comes to mind, not a battalion of faceless warriors. Knight of Cups first and foremost is the story of an individual.

The film begins with the narration of a 'dangerous journey and safe arrival' whereupon we see Christian Bale standing aimlessly in the middle of nowhere. Your immediate questions, who is he? Where is he? Why is he there? Where is he going? Bale's opening line 'All those years living the life of someone I didn't even know.' Here Malick cuts to a tunnel with light bleaching into it fading into images of his childhood. Not even five minutes in and it's clear this film is about a single man's life, memories and journey.

Malick's "Life Trilogy" films are revealed by connecting images, happenings, lines to your own experiences. Interestingly as his films have become more and more personal re: individual, the audience he reaches reacts in much the same way. His memories connect with your own. Two people could love this film, but tell you why without having a single image, line or happening resonating in common.

The first striking image shot in black and white was a beautiful disturbed woman, seemingly imprisoned. There's her face or is it a mask? Maybe it's two? There's more eyes here. How am I looking at her face and her back at the same time? Two X's on her breasts. She seems caught between multiple personalities, but at the end of this sequence she's covered in black paint making gestures as if taunting you. We learn here our Knight's tale has everything to do with wanting to feel love with a woman.

Our first happening is an earthquake. In an earthquake it's instinctual for humans to hit the ground, but even there Rick looks lost, unaware of what's happening.

His first woman with the pink hair is the mercurial one. Gorgeous and exciting, but like a fire if you get too close she will burn you. She even tells him she'll 'drive him crazy', 'make him suffer' before denouncing him as 'weak'.

The next happening is walking in downtown L.A. along Skid Row. Here for not the last time in the film we are shown what suffering is actually like. The juxtaposition between the harsh realities for the people on Skid Row and Rick's seemingly trivial pain is stark. Here it is revealed one brother is dead, the other a drug addict and the father sick quite possibly the reason for it all.

The next striking image is a picturesque shaped topless woman pouring champagne out of a flute glass on to a sleeping, brooding Rick. It is fantastically decadent, but meaningless and tired.

Throughout Knight of Cups Exodus by Wojciech Kilar is played. Outside of the obvious meaning it's a piece of music which would be ominous. The consistency of the tambourine, breath of the wind & brass instruments capped off with a flurry of piano make you feel there is a place you will reach. Full disclosure I had no idea what this piece of music was but it's claim to fame is being used in the trailer for Schindler's List.

The next happening is the Hollywood sequence. This also contains Malick's latest habit of having Spaniards give awkward sounding voiceovers about harsh realities. The image from this was Rick on all fours being led by a leash. Unsurprisingly the scene bleeds into the segment of the story devoted to his ex wife played by Cate Blanchett. He was 'unkind to her', 'almost cruel' she says. They walk down a street, she's dressed in leather, unique, covered but looking sexy, dominant. Much like himself Blanchett is someone to unwrap. There are two gorgeous women in mini skirts walking in front of them who are softer, lighter. He wants her to stay, but he doesn't know how to do it. Here we see thru Blanchett being a doctor treating badly injured people she is better than him. He knows it too. His cup is over flowing with guilt, from not being good enough for her. He is lost in a valley of his own fears. 'She gave me peace', he says. She knows she can not. 'You are still the love of my life', she says.

Next we have the model like one of those leggy women who walked in front of him on the street. 'Is this a friendship we have' she doesn't ask. 'I don't want to wreak havoc men's lives anymore' he wishes she said. She's only a face from the opening sequence. The black paint will soon cover her too, but she does appear to introduce him to spirituality. Like Cate, but unlike the mercurial one she joins him in the ocean. There's a shot of a homeless person sitting, brooding like he would with head in hand who looks like she hasn't lifted her head in years nor will she. His mother is introduced telling us how even as a child he never felt like he had a place at the table. He is the victim of a burglary but his robbers tell him he has nothing of value.

Rick moves on to a person whose job it is to be superficial in an effort to gain material value. Forever she says, 'is no such thing'. The stripper excites him, brings him out of his staid not because she doesn't understand him, but rather because she has shed every layer he has not. Her materialism gives her the satisfaction he's looking to find from his peace, his love. Like falling down a well he bottoms out with these scenes of excess, decadence. He comes back up for air with the aid of a true love a married lady, Natalie Portman's character. He continues his path to spiritual enlightenment visiting the amazing Peter Matthiessen who tells him 'Everything is there perfect, complete... to live in this moment'. She doesn't give up on him, 'There is love in you'. Calling back the 'At last' from one of the more memorable scenes of To The Wonder, asks if he's 'finally found' her? Interestingly he doesn't say come to be with him to live, he says 'come away with me'. The Knight is figuring it out, but his connection to her isn't strong enough to survive adversity. 'What are we now?'

Why Malick is incredible, operating on a different plane than everyone else are little moments which have no reason to impact you destroying you. His recollections intersect with your own. In this film there's a shot of of only Bale's legs. He's laying on the bed one leg stretched out with his other knee up with Natalie Portman leaning over to that leg to trace her hand over his kneecap. It's a one second shot, but perfect. A moment as deep for me as I suspect the whole film was for Malick.

The Knight gets his seal of approval from his father and finally lets out much of the emotion pent up inside of him. He visits the beach, but this time it's not alone with a loved one but full of people, children having fun. He still remembers his ex wife. She's sad like him, but brings people joy and health. There's a new woman but he's content and happy to be playing tennis with her tho she can't play. The films subverts story telling completely by ending with 'begin' and open roads. The Knight is now free to roam the earth.

Knight of Cups is a remarkable film. Tree of Life was about family, To the Wonder about country, Knight of Cups about the self. The Hollywood aspect to the film is entirely tangential. How he ended it makes sense because it's about him with the proof being his increased output in recent years. The man studied philosophy so clearly he's going to investigate his own life's value(s). Perhaps more than anything the best word to use to describe the film is courageous.

Great post, Black Hat.

I think "Knight of Cups" is about how we live our lives. Are we living a false life, or an authentic life? First Malick shows ways of living that perhaps lead to feelings of being lost or unfulfilled, and then he hints at better ways of living and being true to oneself. Make no mistake, this is philosophy mixed with art. The little speech from the man at the Japanese Garden was something of a turning point in the film. I've only seen the film twice. I definitely need a lot more viewings to understand it.

At this point, it seems unlikely that anything will dislodge "Knight of Cups" from the #1 spot on my top ten list for 2016, unless Malick himself dislodges it, with another of his films coming out later this year.

[Ribs]

I, too, am mildly optimistic that my top ten of the year could be topped off by three Malicks. But given how long they've taken to come out I don't think it's reasonable to expect anything actually to come by the end of the year other than the shorter version of Voyage of Time which has been definitively promised as planned for this year.

[Black Hat]

Has anyone come across a well thought out critique of the film they'd recommend reading? The negative ones I've read has either had the writer getting off on masturbatory zingers or somewhat interestingly being complimentary until bizarrely concluding they weren't a fan. I respect the latter as it's indicative with the writer struggling with the work, but where they end feels it's more a result of exhaustion than anything else.

Conversely these were two great reads falling on the positive side of the ledger

[jorencain]

Has anyone come across a well thought out critique of the film they'd recommend reading? The negative ones I've read has either had the writer getting off on masturbatory zingers or somewhat interestingly being complimentary until bizarrely concluding they weren't a fan. I respect the latter as it's indicative with the writer struggling with the work, but where they end feels it's more a result of exhaustion than anything else.

Conversely these were two great reads falling on the positive side of the ledger

Last week's Filmspotting (podcast) seems pretty good. I haven't seen the film, so I can't comment further, but they are at least thoughtful about the things they felt were unsuccessful.

[John Cope]

Other than the Brody piece and the Pierre Berthomieu piece in Lola, this Kierkegaard inspired reading is by far the best I've seen so far. Metaphysics are crucial to an understanding of Malick's work and if not taken seriously than no wonder it all falls apart. I have my own rather substantial piece in process which draws more from this end of the spectrum. The other pieces you posted, while positive about the film, not surprisingly insist on situating Rick's spiritual fulfillment as predicative upon fulfilling Natural Law criteria, a reading I consider to be a tremendous diminishment.

[Black Hat]

Thanks Joren, I'll give the pod a listen.

John I'm a big Kierkegaard person and see a lot of him in Malick so thank you for posting the link, very much looking forward to reading it. What do you specifically mean by 'metaphysics'? You're right about the pieces I linked to. I found the longer one especially fascinating, in fact I think it's possible to argue the reading embellishes the film.

[John Cope]

What do you specifically mean by 'metaphysics'?

Probably what most people mean. Not referencing a specific school here but rather the general discipline.

[Black Hat]

Understood. Please let me know where I can find your piece when it's published.

[oh yeah]

I'm hoping Robert Koehler chimes in on this one. He wrote a very insightful critique in Cineaste of Malick's later style around the time that To The Wonder came out. One of his main criticisms is the way in which the fluid Steadicam style has cheapened Malick's cinema.

It's behind a paywall but here is an excerpt:

Criterion's new Blu-ray release of Badlands, arriving on the heels of this spring's theatrical release of To the Wonder, provides a useful lesson in what happens to a director skilled in the ways of composition and a composed manner of editing when he turns to handheld cameras and digital editing tools. Considering its subject, Badlands is a movie governed by an unflappable and uncanny calm. Malick gazes at the engulfing flatlands surrounding Kit and Holly, and his camera (regardless of which three cinematographers he used on the project) maintains Kit's cool, steady exterior. His interest in field and sky, the horizontal bisection defining the above and the below to form a massive stage and playground, is a key subject of the film and a dramatic antonym for a state of being. This is why he rarely uses handheld shots (or, at least, retains very few in the final cut) that upset this steady regard for the horizon and for verticals; they happen only when Kit is at his most brazen and unleashed, setting fire to Holly's family home. The frame's sudden chaos is a shock to the system after the dominant calm, and it signals a shift. The mobile camera, sparingly used, makes its point.

The Steadicam and handheld camera strategy that Malick has been using with his preferred cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki have brought out all of his worst instincts. Tools with few physical limitations, handheld cameras can be tilted, swung, or rotated in any possible direction and axis. Lubezki and Malick's work appears unmoored, lacking a governing idea for their uses of the camera, either in its movement or in its way of interpreting light; the former comes off as impulsive, the latter as merely pictorial. So, because the cameras can be swung around willy-nilly, they are. If they can be made with a nearly unvarying use of ultra wide-angle lenses, as short as 14mm, to simulate the human eye's close-up perception when the body and head shift or move quickly or suddenly, they are, but without the crucial element of thought behind the movement. Malick, once an artist with a disciplined sensibility for scale and sensation, has gone goofy with the devices, surprisingly much like the first Sixties-era directors who senselessly toyed with newfangled zoom lenses. While the ideas behind Badlands dictate the camera's attitude, the camera's unlimited flexibility in The Tree of Life and To the Wonder dictate each movie's attitude. This results in dangerous traps: scene after scene is filled with shots that become like involuntary hiccups, as in the repeated device of starting a shot in hyper close-up and quickly swinging out to a slightly wider shot, as if the camera eye were repelled by the subject. Which then only begs the question: why the repulsion? When both films are seen together, this shot comes at the viewer so often it begins to take on the impact of an unintended joke.

Take it a step further, and look at the digitally shot work of Jia Zhangke. Working with somewhat similar equipment, Jia's approach is to maintain control of his tools. If anything, his gaze has grown increasingly steady since he has shifted from film, an unobtrusive regard that allows the work to live and breathe. (One of the most startling aspects of his new trans-China epic, A Touch of Sin, is how the sudden bursts of extreme violence are viewed with Zenlike camerawork.) The horrible misuse and brilliantly judged use of the same tools by two major film artists is an object lesson in the beauty of the self-imposition of limits.

To the Wonder lists nine people in some kind of producer's role, including lead producers Sarah Green and Nicolas Gonda. The Tree of Life has at least twelve, not counting some line producers and specialist producers. Producers, of course, can be scoundrels, like Irving Thalberg grabbing movies away and recutting them decades before Harvey Weinstein did, or Carlo Ponti harshly pulling the plug on master filmmakers' projects days before production. The best Classical Hollywood producers could challenge a director's assumptions or weak spots, and make him think again, think harder, go at it a different way. A certain kind of friendly producer of auteurist projects, once a European and Asian specialty, has taken hold in American cinema, and while it's usually a good thing in allowing the filmmaker maximum freedom within the budget's confines, it's clear that this has become a terrible thing for Malick, who, after all, is a writer-director-producer.

Once his funding and funding sources are secured, nobody says no to him. Nobody tells him that a line, like that narrated by Olga Kurylenko ("What is this love that loves us?"), sounds idiotic and needs to be rewritten. Sources who spent time inside the editing suites for both Tree and Wonder say that groups of editors working in one room would have no idea what another editing group in another room was doing. Everything is deferred to Malick, whose new unfortunate methods for handheld cameras have extended to digital editing tools, which allow for easy jumping from shot to shot, and have prompted him to hold shots for split seconds when he may have previously held them for the eye and mind to register. These are all decisions and choices and Malick's producers evidently never question any of them. Perversely, as his projects gain more and more producers, they manifest all the worst qualities of an artist whose every whim is indulged.

The problem with Malick's yes people begins with his screenplays--if they can even be called screenplays now. If the distinction between an everyday producer and an artistic producer is that the latter functions like a collaborative (text) editor, then Malick emphatically has no editor. He has established a working environment where that function has been removed; he's only following the mode of many great filmmakers, from Jean Vigo to Lisandro Alonso, who can operate without the intervening outside voice of wisdom that a strong yet supportive creative producer can provide. Unfortunately for Malick, he's demonstrated that he can't, yet insistently proceeds as if this weren't true.

For all of his perceived identity as a radical narrative filmmaker, Malick has always generally adhered to the standard three--act story structure, and this includes the latest work in which the narratives hover inside somewhere like phantoms. After Badlands, which comprised a chain of scenes and brief sequences, he grew interested in the technique of long sequences, which reaches its zenith in the extraordinary sequences that form the core of both Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line--a movie which can feel like one extended sequence bookended by Prewitt's (Jim Caviezel) existential reveries. The New World maintains the sequence structure, but less so; sequences are now more broken up into something like episodes, which accounts for the film's occasionally odd, fitful pace.

Sequences, or anything resembling them, are jettisoned in the two latest films. While Malick retains three acts and his affection for prologues, epilogues and, of course, voice-over narration, he fractures what he would have previously constructed as a sequence (for example, the early phase of married family life in The Tree of Life with Brad Pitt's and Jessica Chastain's Mr. and Mrs. O'Brien, or Ben Affleck's Neil and Kurylenko's Marina when they try to restart their aborted relationship) into barely connected bits of mini-scenes. It's probably the case that every Malick film has a first draft on the page and a final draft in the editing room--there's proof enough of this in the ample reports of stunned cast members discovering their roles reduced or eliminated in the final cut after months of shooting--but something more perilous has happened with The Tree of Life and To the Wonder.

Unlike the New Hollywood studs, Malick preferred from the start to dedramatize his material, following in a tradition laid out by Rossellini and Antonioni yet seldom embraced by Americans. (Kelly Reichardt is exemplary in this way among American directors who've arrived since Malick's generation, which is why she stands out from the pack.) Yet, in key moments of Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, and The New World, he provides essential dramatic ballast on screen to support his story's underlying nature and meaning. During a few moments of The Tree of Life, the essential conflicts between Mr. O'Brien and eldest son Jack (Hunter McCracken) and O'Brien and his wife are directly observed and played out. But they arise so sparingly that Malick projects an embarrassment for even these few moments of direct human emotion displayed by his characters. He ensures this doesn't repeat itself in To the Wonder, where anything like drama is eliminated in favor of the gestures, glances, and bodily motion that happen before and after the pivotal moment of conflict. Or something more perverse: he often jumps entirely over the basis of characters' conflicts (how and why Neil and Marina grow distant from each other) and into the fights that erupt out of them, as if images of the fighting were enough. Because these people are barely knowable (Does Marina prance and leap around because she's an ex-dancer? Is Neil a soil and water tester for an oil company, an environmentalist, or something else? What do they see in each other except an abstract "love," which lards all of Marina's French-language narration?), the fighting is purely abstract, but not in an interesting way: the domestic tussles play as phony and artificial, facsimiles of the real thing.

This is because whatever was written in the "screenplay" of To the Wonder has been shredded in Malick's array of editing suites into an unsustainable daisy chain of scene fragments, held together by the flimsy sealing wax of nearly inaudible, maniacally whispered narration. This is spoken by not only by Kurylenko but also by Javier Bardem as a parish priest enduring his Dark Night of the Soul, a character existing in what may as well be an entirely separate film not titled To the Wonder. Fellini could make 81/2 from a few pages of notes and a brief outline, as could Godard for his most overtly "scripted" films in the Sixties. They operated by expansion; Malick is now operating by reduction and avoidance, with whatever is left of "scenes" in his final cut barely suggesting traces of the fuller and more complete scenes that once were. This is a strange spectacle, an artist self-imploding in public.

[Black Hat]

I'm glad you brought To the Wonder up. I watched it again in between the two times I saw Knight of Cups and was surprised by how poorly it held up for me. This time a film I very much saw as a meditation between Mid-American & European values lacked depth. There was little in the way of simple, but often overlooked sensibilities which Malick at his best flushes out organically. A lot of it felt forced, like too much of an effort. In fact many of the harshest critiques hurled at Knight of Cups feel more apt applied to To the Wonder.

[inderweltsein]

John, I have read even better texts than three ones you evoke (that I all already knew).
The pity and problem is that they are all 3 in French and untranslated. One of them being the one of a close friend that is exceptional.. (And written with only one viewing!)

That made my own humble piece (that took me many viewings between february 2015 and november) , with a similar thesis than this friend and TL, but less inspired and flowing, almost shameful.

[John Cope]

I like TtW just as much as KoC; it is a similar technique and approach but it's significantly different, too, hits different notes (I still think the stunningly beautiful McAdams sequence could be lifted out as a piece unto itself and presented as a succinct demonstration of Malick's methods and interests--this could also be done with numerous sequences in KoC). I have to confess that as much as I generally like and admire Koehler I don't agree with him here and, in fact, think he's utterly wrong on pretty much all counts. It's a funny thing about this later phase of Malick that it seems to have a way of frustrating and even confounding some otherwise very perceptive critics (James Quandt is another example). Of course, this view assumes its own view of Malick's work, one more receptive to it and generous and positive toward it.

[Oedipax]

The pity and problem is that they are all 3 in French and untranslated. One of them being the one of a close friend that is exceptional.. (And written with only one viewing!)

If you have links to any or all of these, I would really appreciate them!

[whaleallright]

That Robert Koehler excerpt is spot on (which isn't surprising!). Anyone have the cite for the full article? I'd like to chase it down.

[oh yeah]

That Robert Koehler excerpt is spot on (which isn't surprising!). Anyone have the cite for the full article? I'd like to chase it down.

Here you go.

[Trees]

"Pay attention to this moment. Everything is there. Perfect. And complete. Just as it is."

[oh yeah]

Uh, Tumblr is that-a-way

[nerffan1]

This movie reminded me so much of La Dolce Vita with Rick an introverted Marcello. The women, the debauchery, the emptiness, the randomness of characters popping up, the music. People always run to the Malick/Tarkovsky connection, but I've always seen one with Fellini which has only been increasing with each film.

I haven't had the opportunity to watch this film, but when I saw the trailer I thought the very same thing: it's very Fellinesque. It reminded more of (another film influenced by "La Dolce Vita") "La Grande Belleza" (2013) by Paolo Sorrentino: the story's about a rich writer who has lost his way in an overwhelmingly meaningless world that holds an overwhelming amount of beauty. Just to provoke: What makes each of these films stand by themselves as unique? Are they that different from each other?

Does anybody think that Malick's work is somewhat similar to Alain Resnais? Or, at least, similar to the style he uses in "Hiroshima Mon Amour" (1959)? I claim it's similar because you have the use of voice-overs, the music, and the use of montage to make meaning of seemingly random shots. Watch the intro of HMA (the one with the museum) and see for yourselves.

[Foam]

I haven't had the opportunity to watch this film, but when I saw the trailer I thought the very same thing: it's very Fellinesque. It reminded more of (another film influenced by "La Dolce Vita") "La Grande Belleza" (2013) by Paolo Sorrentino: the story's about a rich writer who has lost his way in an overwhelmingly meaningless world that holds an overwhelming amount of beauty. Just to provoke: What makes each of these films stand by themselves as unique?

Just to start, the differing approaches to cinematography, editing, dialogue, voiceover, and music. Or the wildly different metaphysical and political attitudes. And, assuming that we're talking LGB vs. KoC rather than LGB vs. LDV, the fact that they are shot in different parts of the world with different histories which are integral to the significance of both films.

I think it's better to compare works based on what they specifically offer once you watch them rather than what's likely to be present in a Netflix plot synopsis. KoC profits more from a comparison with Pilgrim's Progress or the Hermetica than it does from a comparison to La Grande Belleza. And you'll probably have more appreciation for La Grande Belleza if you compare it to something like Magnolia than insisting upon seeing it in relation to La Dolce Vita.

[Black Hat]

Nerffan I've never seen La Grande Belleza so I'm not in a position to comment. As for Resnais and Malick maybe with something like Days of Heaven, but even then I'd say it's a stretch. The use of voice over in Hiroshima Mon Amour is far more direct, it leads in and out of flashbacks where as Malick's voiceover in later years is fragmented not particularly leading you in or out of the scene. The voiceover in HMA are also (whether real or not) directed to another character where as Malick's are directed inward.

Just to start, the differing approaches to cinematography, editing, dialogue, voiceover, and music. Or the wildly different metaphysical and political attitudes. And, assuming that we're talking LGB vs. KoC rather than LGB vs. LDV, the fact that they are shot in different parts of the world with different histories which are integral to the significance of both films.

Yes for sure they are very different stylistically, but Fellini and later Malick are very similar in what they're most interested in is themselves. They also have interest in showing regular people, especially the grotesque and lampooning the supposed beautiful.

[Foam]

Yes for sure they are very different stylistically, but Fellini and later Malick are very similar in what they're most interested in is themselves.

Well, the question was what makes the films different, so I answered that.

And I think it's more accurate to say they are united by how they (perhaps) draw upon personal experiences to explore larger themes. Which in my mind is not all that remarkable of a similarity.

Saying that they are interested in "themselves" first and foremost is pretty spurious. It's also frankly misleading in Malick's case where in my mind the whole preoccupation is about the struggle of connecting to what is outside of oneself.

I'm even critical of the tendency to describe Tree of Life on as Malick's "autobiographical" trilogy. We really don't know enough about Malick's life to say precisely where the personal themes end and the more universal themes begin. They may be semi-autobiographical but we don't have much access to Malick's biography so the sense in which they are semi-autobiographical, at least for now, is the sense in which they are least interesting.

[djproject]

I'm even critical of the tendency to describe Tree of Life on as Malick's "autobiographical" trilogy. We really don't know enough about Malick's life to say precisely where the personal themes end and the more universal themes begin. They may be semi-autobiographical but we don't have much access to Malick's biography so the sense in which they are semi-autobiographical, at least for now, is the sense in which they are least interesting.

Since I have jokingly described this as a semi-autobiographical trilogy, I figured I would share my thoughts about this.

The Tree of Life shares the general location where Malick grew up as a child (he also grew up in Oklahoma as well) and a key life-event with the loss of one of his brothers, who was also a talented musician. To the Wonder shares Malick's marriage with a French woman and eventual divorce and then the eventual marriage with his high school sweetheart, with whom he is currently married now. Knight of Cups shares only Malick's once station as a working screenwriter during the 1970s.

All of that said, Knight of Cups is the one where I feel it is much less about "drawing from one's life" but more "seeking out life's possibilities". From what has been revealed about him from others, it is highly unlikely he would indulge in a surface/even hedonistic lifestyle: certainly now and not so much back then. But at the same time, I cannot see how the possibility of living that lifestyle wasn't at least known to him. After all, he may keep to himself, but it doesn't mean he cannot go out every now and then. In thinking about it - and it has only been that one time several weeks ago - I think this is much more of a general thought experiment: what would happen if I chose to indulge in this?

SpoilerShow

More than that, I do see this as a spiritual journey of sorts where the central character does "renounce" that life in the end. Furthermore, I think in the end, he is probably in a similar place that Malick probably was after Days of Heaven. In that sense, it was a thought experiment that could test whether one could reach a similar conclusion even if one goes on a different path. To put it another way, it can be seen as a kind of "alternate biography" where if you made a different set of choices in life and could it still lead to a similar end goal ... assuming, of course, you believe such a thing exists.

[Foam]

That's all fair enough. To be clear, my thought is that trying to make sense of these films through the barebones outline we have of Malick's life is not the best interpretive move or, at the very least, not the move I would encourage for contributing to a deeper understanding of the films. Especially when, as we have seen in this thread, there are all kinds of things which are clearly within these films (references to esoteric concepts which are far from esoteric) which are often in danger of going unacknowledged despite titling the films and their different sections.

Biographical interpretation of these films should probably happen eventually--maybe well after Malick has died--but for now I think it's mostly a mildly interesting thought experiment. The problem at this moment is that this kind of thought experiment is all too common a way of reading the films, and is destined to come to an interpretive impasse. This impasse would then embolden the arguments of the detractors... that these are recklessly self-indulgent films... rather than films which merely take the self as a heuristic for larger concerns.

For instance, most reviews of Knight of Cups take it for granted that Christian Bale is an uncomplicated stand in for Malick, while shrugging off the larger spiritual concepts as a bunch of hot air. If all the "top critics" understand the film in this way (even, in a way, the positive ones), it's hard to blame the detractors for being uninterested in the film. If that were all that the film was, I would be uninterested in it myself!

So I guess I'm not saying that a biographical reading of the films is totally out of line. I'm just saying it would be nice to have a shift in emphasis in the ways these films are usually discussed. John Cope and others have referred to the few writings which are beginning to do so, but this is still, unfortunately, far from the norm.