Chris­t­ian Bale: ​‘Ter­rence Mal­ick is a great destroy­er of vanity’

Chris­t­ian Bale’s rep­u­ta­tion has been fear­some ever since audio was leaked of him los­ing his shit at a crew mem­ber on the set of Ter­mi­na­tor: Sal­va­tion. Call it The Mal­ick Effect, or call it the volatil­i­ty of being human, but the man we spoke to about his role in Knight of Cups was a com­plete gen­tle­man who opened up with detail and ease.

LWLies: Knight of Cups takes place pri­mar­i­ly in Los Ange­les. How do you per­son­al­ly relate to how the city is depicted?

Bale: When I first went out to LA, I got invit­ed to things and it just blew my mind. You thought, ​‘I’ve nev­er seen peo­ple like this, or didn’t know that any­one lived this way at all.’ To me, par­ties had been a case of hang­ing out under a motor­way, smoke a few joints and smash a beer bot­tle. Sud­den­ly, you’re at these amaz­ing man­sions and beach hous­es. I was in awe of it when I first came out. Then, after a while, I realised, yeah, it’s not for me.

What was your first con­ver­sa­tion with Ter­rence Mal­ick about this film?

We nev­er had a for­mal con­ver­sa­tion, like, ​‘Chris­t­ian, I would like you to play this par­tic­u­lar char­ac­ter.’ We spoke about this project and oth­er projects and ideas and, even­tu­al­ly, the char­ac­ter who became Rick. It devel­oped slow­ly until, ​‘Hey, let’s go do that one.’ We’d worked on The New World togeth­er where there was a script, even though he liked to go away from it a great deal. You could see that he was head­ing in this direc­tion. He said to me that he want­ed to do some­thing where we would dis­cuss char­ac­ter – real­ly work that out prop­er­ly – but there would nev­er be a script. We would fig­ure it out and dis­cov­er it as we went. I imag­ine that he had a pure idea of what the sto­ry would hope­ful­ly be, but was very hap­py to see it change. I imag­ine that, nat­u­ral­ly, through the way we shot this, by the end he had mul­ti­ple films that he could have made. So it was a great sur­prise when I watched it, because I didn’t know exact­ly what it was going to be.

Does this freestyle approach mean that there’s no offi­cial start and end date?

Rough­ly, yeah. We actu­al­ly moved very quick­ly. The mot­to was, ​‘Start before we’re ready.’ I’d walk on set and the cam­era would be rolling already and I’d just go, ​‘Alright, fig­ure out what I’m doing.’ He’d have peo­ple com­ing at me. I didn’t know what they were going to say or do.

What hap­py acci­dents came from this technique?

When you don’t real­ly know what you’re meant to be doing, you have that lost look on your face and you’re con­fused. But it’s good con­fu­sion. Or some­body else might not realise that this is the moment that they should start talk­ing about some­thing, so you don’t talk. Where there was meant to be a scene, where there was dia­logue, it end­ed up being silent because the per­son didn’t realise that the cam­era was rolling. You get these hap­py acci­dents that end up being quite wonderful.

Was there any­thing from the shoot that you regret is not in the fin­ished film?

I don’t remem­ber. Terry’s a great destroy­er of van­i­ty. You might do some­thing where nor­mal­ly you’d think, ​‘Wow, man, I did a real­ly good scene,’ then you’d look up and the camera’s look­ing over that way instead. You learn, ​‘Right, just do it for your­self and then if he does decide to turn the cam­era around, don’t try to repeat what you just did. Alright, so it might not be as great, or dra­mat­ic, or mem­o­rable but, just keep it truth­ful.’ That was all that he ever looked for.

The lan­guage in the film is poet­ic and spir­i­tu­al. Is that the way Mal­ick talks when he directs?

He’s very com­i­cal. He’s very humor­ous, Ter­ry. You wouldn’t be dis­ap­point­ed. He’s a won­der­ful con­ver­sa­tion­al­ist and has some won­der­ful insights and com­ments and a very dif­fer­ent way of com­mu­ni­cat­ing. But then he also has a great silli­ness, like every­one should have. His sets are very con­ducive to feel­ing coura­geous to do what­ev­er you feel like doing, and he’s very accept­ing of that. He real­ly enjoys peo­ple. He likes hear­ing their ideas. He doesn’t just want to impose his own, which some­times you get with directors.

Your char­ac­ter goes to the desert to sort out his life. Do you have any rit­u­als for when you feel unsat­is­fied about some­thing in your life?

I can be quite obses­sive about things so start­ing with some­thing real­ly minute and study­ing and try­ing to under­stand it in a very small way. That relax­es me and then you can grad­u­al­ly open up and deal with big­ger things and more peo­ple. And music. I lis­ten to music a great deal when I’m feel­ing at a loose end. That’s always been very impor­tant to me. This film is more like music, or lit­er­a­ture, than a film because there’s an open­ness to the inter­pre­ta­tion of it, where you can feel very per­son­al­ly about it regard­less of the inten­tion of the cre­ator. Some films are so struc­tured that there’s no doubt about exact­ly what was intend­ed and how you should feel. With this, I feel that you’re involved in the inven­tion as an audi­ence member.

How about the oth­er Mal­ick film [pro­vi­sion­al­ly titled Weight­less] that was shot around the same time?

Things hap­pened and I wasn’t able to real­ly be there. I only man­aged to do a cou­ple of days, which means I won’t be in it!