Hollywood by way of Dante

‘Knight of Cups’ is a primordial nightmare

The movement of life, at the intersection of dreams and cinema, has suffused the work of legendary auteur Terrence Malick. His latest, “Knight of Cups,” is a tour de force for those who already love his densely philosophical, narratively esoteric, borderline ecclesiastical treatises on life in America. It also caps an obvious trilogy.

Love is the golden thread: “The Tree of Life” was a hagiographical look at the birth of the universe and the yearning for an afterlife with those we love, filtered through the rose-colored prism of the 1950s American Dream. “To the Wonder” distilled those themes into an even more romanticized vision amid the suburbanized, ersatz ubiquity of the modern Midwest, where even the clergy offers no answers.

“Knight of Cups” hews closer to “The Tree of Life’s” narrative aesthetic. But, in contrast to that film’s warm, nostalgic reminiscence, “Cups” is a Tarkovsky-esque, slickly primordial sci-fi nightmare—a search for humanity in Los Angeles by way of Dante. It feels like a critique of hell. 

Christian Bale plays Rick, a depressed screenwriter who resides in an emotional purgatory, despite his Hollywood success. His broken family and the consequence of his choices fuel his existential malaise. The impassive glass-and-steel metropolis around him seethes with ephemeral relationships and opportunistic people. Rick, perhaps because of his privilege, seeks providence in knowing himself, since he can’t find solace in anyone else. 

Broken into episodic acts named after tarot cards, “Knight of Cups” is a dreamscape of fallible memories and ghostly internal monologues from characters who seem to be speaking from beyond the grave.

“Damnation is the pieces of your life that never come together,” Rick is sagely told.

Repeated forms, painterly and sonic, play out in lucid point-of-view. Poetic passages of water and light, cold modernism, and sexual ennui frame the baroque purgatory from which Rick can’t escape.

“Knight of Cups” is, in one sense, a departure for Malick: a Movie-About-Hollywood that, like “The Player,” loves sticking recognizable actors in the margins of the protagonist’s myopic realm. Along with Bale, an eclectic roster of stars dot the periphery. Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Antonio Banderas, and Teresa Palmer cameo, while quirky, blink-and-you’ll-miss-them appearances from Nick Kroll, Joe Lo Truglio, Nick Offerman and Dan Harmon highlight the Altaman-esque self-reference at work. (Considering the comedic pedigree of the latter half of the cast, it should be noted that “Knight of Cups” is not funny. At all.)

There aren’t a lot of parameters with which to judge a film like this, aside from the viewer’s gut reaction. It looks like every second of a beatific, disquieting dream thanks to the director’s peerless sense of composition and the hypnotic, Oscar-winning cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki (“The Revenant”). Malick is an artist, a dream weaver with a syntax all his own. But with his last three films, his visual motifs, while varied in scope, are becoming a labor of stylization, and “Knight of Cups” won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. But that’s okay, because Malick is making films for himself now. Masters usually do.

"Knight of Cups" opens Friday, April 8 at Circle Cinema. For tickets and times, visit circlecinema.com

For more from Joe, read his review of "10 Cloverfield Lane."