Knight of Cups – first look review

The most antic­i­pat­ed film of Berli­nale 2015 looks set to be the best one. It’s hard to imag­ine equiv­a­lent notes of grace and mean­ing being struck in this com­pe­ti­tion or indeed in this world. Grace and mean­ing are not new adjec­tives for describ­ing the work of writer/​director Ter­rence Mal­ick but, grat­i­fy­ing­ly, this time his dis­tinc­tive poet­ic cin­e­ma encas­es a sim­ple and coher­ent nar­ra­tive. Exis­ten­tial­ism from a rich play­boy makes it tonal­ly com­pa­ra­ble to Pao­lo Sorrentino’s The Great Beau­ty but this is also an absorb­ing study of the stress­es of being a wom­an­is­er. Really.

When Rick (Chris­t­ian Bale) was a young boy his father told him the fable of the knight of cups. This knight was sent by the king to Egypt to find a pearl. On arrival the knight was giv­en a cup to drink from which stu­pe­fied him. Instead of find­ing the pearl, he slept. He for­got who he was. This fable is the film, but because the set­ting is con­tem­po­rary Los Ange­les rather than Ancient Egypt, Rick’s stu­por is a wak­ing one, dot­ted with beau­ti­ful women and jet­set par­ties. He awakes after one night of excess in a room with nat­ur­al light stream­ing in from floor-to-ceil­ing win­dows, his com­pan­ions clad in a sil­ver lame biki­ni and a gold ram’s head.

Mal­ick doesn’t judge his lead man for his ele­gant­ly wast­ed lifestyle. The whis­pered voiceover that – to the amuse­ment of detrac­tors and scin­til­la­tion of devo­tees – has become Malick’s fail­safe way of evok­ing high­er con­scious­ness has nev­er been more exquis­ite, repeat­ed­ly find­ing the barest way to com­mu­ni­cate the anguish and com­plex­i­ties of the human spirit.

Rick is a com­e­dy writer liv­ing in a sleek min­i­mal­ist apart­ment in LA. Mir­ror­ing The Tree of Life, his fam­i­ly is strug­gling with the after­math of a tragedy. His broth­er (Wes Bent­ley) has become numb (“I just want to feel some­thing, man”) while his father (Bri­an Den­nehy) car­ries an air of sor­row and a per­spec­tive on his son (“My son, the light’s gone out of your eyes. Wom­an­is­er!”) Rick keeps his loved ones at arm’s length, defend­ing the invis­i­ble world that is his quest for the pearl.

Not that his quest for the pearl goes so swim­ming­ly, although his log­ic is seduc­tive. ​“When the soul sees a beau­ti­ful woman or a man, it remem­bers the beau­ty it used to know in heav­en.” Malick’s mas­tery over lan­guage is tran­scen­dent. He attach­es the syn­tax of the heav­ens to earth­ly pur­suits. In these ele­vat­ed terms, it is under­stand­able that a man could con­fuse sen­su­al plea­sures for some­thing more profound.

There is romance to Rick’s ser­i­al monogamy. Woman one (of six) is Del­la played by the nev­er-more-cap­ti­vat­ing Imo­gen Poots. She is wear­ing a pink wig when they meet for the first time and cir­cles round him like a lioness. He fol­lows, hyp­no­tised, back to her room as she looks at him, half-sneer­ing, half seduc­tive. Rush­ing cam­era sequences of pranc­ing and danc­ing form their courtships and we see the first of what will be many con­vert­ible-rac­ing-down-the-free­way sequences. Trans­porta­tion and sub­mer­gence in water are the leit motifs that jab at Rick’s mem­o­ry of what he needs to be pursuing.

Back in the real world Del­la extends her hands, stroking the bil­low­ing air with her fin­ger­tips as if the air had some kind of trans­fer­able wis­dom. This type of pho­tog­ra­phy has become a Mal­ick­ian main­stay, so earnest and thus easy to mock but, also, an eco­nom­ic way of show­ing a per­son beg­ging nature for release. Rick does not oper­ate on a high­er lev­el than his women. They desire some­thing pearl-shaped just as deeply as he does, and this shared long­ing binds them togeth­er. ​“We’re not lead­ing the life that we’re meant for, we’re meant for some­thing else,” says Del­la. She con­fronts her truth, which is also his truth, and it dri­ves him onwards.

Imo­gen Poots has a stronger char­ac­ter than those that fol­low in her wake. It’s fair to say that Cate Blanchett, Frei­da Pin­to, Natal­ie Port­man, Isabel Lucas and Tere­sa Palmer are only as indi­vid­ual as their dif­fer­ing phys­i­cal appear­ances allow them to be. The cam­era makes love to each of their forms, drink­ing in dewy skin, sparkling eyes, flow­ing hair glint­ing in the light. Some like to play, some like to med­i­tate in still­ness, all of them are afford­ed the dig­ni­ty and wis­dom of great lines. All of them are tak­en on Christian’s Bale default idea of a date which is to say run­ning joy­ful­ly through the ocean. Or run­ning joy­ful­ly through a white-pil­lared man­sion. To love this film is to enjoy its director’s visu­al obses­sions cap­tured by his faith­ful cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, Emmanuel Lubezki.

A cyn­ic might say that Mal­ick has fil­tered the objec­ti­fi­ca­tion of women through art­house sen­si­bil­i­ties, but he is a step ahead. This is the sto­ry of a man whose drug of choice is women. The way he sees them is nec­es­sar­i­ly at a dis­tance. This is his whole issue. Mal­ick has craft­ed the per­fect philo­soph­i­cal basis for obses­sive­ly film­ing the world’s most beau­ti­ful woman in a way that is sub­lime­ly taste­ful and rev­er­ent. All the while some­thing, is scratch­ing at Rick from beneath. As he whis­pers at one point: ​“The pearl!” The film takes flight – like the many over­head planes Earth­bound Rick glances up at – in the anguished rumi­na­tions uni­form­ly dis­trib­uted across all char­ac­ters, big and small.

Every­one is search­ing and every­one is frus­trat­ed. Every­one is full of feel­ing that can’t find a host in the world. (“So much love inside us nev­er gets out.”) As Rick leaves gra­cious ladies behind, the idea sud­den­ly dawns that maybe the pearl is mean­ing­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tion in all its painful self-inter­est­ed can­dour. In oth­er words: we suf­fer alone, there­fore we are. Still the final hope­ful line encour­ages us to keep div­ing down search­ing for a gem plant­ed by child­hood memory.