Terrence Malick's Latest, 'Knight of Cups', Is Another Search for Meaning Knight of CupsTerrence MalickChristian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Brian Dennehy, Antonio Banderas, Freida Pinto, Wes Bentley, Isabel Lucas, Teresa Palmer, Imogen Poots, Peter Matthiessen, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Cherry Jones(Broad Green Pictures)US theatrical: 4 Mar 2016 (Limited release)UK theatrical: 6 May 2016 (General release)2015TrailerOfficial Site Like the deck of tarot cards that provides its narrative spine, Knight of Cups is shuffled up and dealt out with a witchy randomness. Making a mockery of Syd Field’s rules of screenwriting (where’s the inciting incident?), the film offers stories of sprawling entropy. Whether that’s enough to sustain an entire movie will be decided by the viewer’s appetite for moony maundering in gorgeous settings. Like other recent Terrence Malick movies, Knight of Cups is an oblique odyssey of self-examination shadowed by wonderment and pained memories of family.
The seeker here is Rick, a screenwriter whose professional success hasn’t translated into happiness. Christian Bale plays him as a standoffish grump with impeccably mussed hair and suit jackets. His default position is numbed and conflicted, except when he’s trying to get various waifs into bed with him. “I could crack you out of your shell,” offers one of his lovers, “make you suffer.” But before and after her, Rick remains passive, brooding, and wrestling with a dark father figure and painful past. But if much of Knight of Cups scans like every Malick film since The New World, the auteur of misdirection and introspection this time makes his intentions clear from the beginning. The first voice we hear is John Gielgud’s, reading The Pilgrim’s Progress and so announcing, in effect, that we are about to witness a lost soul’s journey to understanding. His allegory is not only Christian, however, as Rick receives advice from both a kindly Catholic priest (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and a teacher of Zen (writer Peter Matthiessen), who counsels being calm and in the moment, “Everything is there, perfect and complete.”
Rick’s journey is structured around the tarot cards that he sees when visiting a fortune-teller. Serving as the film’s chapter titles (The Hanged Man, Death, The Hermit, and so on), the cards also signal his serial encounters with women. The chronology is difficult to parse, but Nancy (Cate Blanchett) appears to be Patient Zero. Rick’s scenes with Nancy are the ones that most closely approximate domestic stability. They share a house together, their interactions aren’t so puppies-in-love as his later infatuations, and, as a doctor, Nancy has a grown-up’s job. Rick’s other infatuations are more fleeting, with the fashion model Helen (Freida Pinto), the model-ish millennial Karen (Teresa Palmer), who is forever flinging her arms out and spinning in showy ecstasy, or the unavailable, married Elizabeth (Natalie Portman). The one constant in each liaison is a desire to twirl about on the beach while smiling wide into Emmanuel Lubezki’s camera as it does swooping parabolas around the couple.
An old Hollywood hand, Rick is cynical about just such movie conventions. “See the palm trees?” he asks in a mordant voiceover. “They tell you anything is possible.” Rick’s apathy radiates off him in dark waves whenever he’s pursued by an agent, studio head or business manager. There’s almost a charming fantasy to these scenes, which imagine a filmmaking world in which writers are chased down as though they were A-list stars or directors by people looking to throw money at them. At the same time, the Los Angeles in Knight of Cups is a familiar one, where the housing is either elegantly minimalist mansions or Venice Beach apartments, the cars are all convertibles, and the women stick-thin, gorgeous, and limned with a soulful sadness. A random-seeming assortment of actors float through as background, from Antonio Banderas to Kevin Corrigan, as do Hollywood-adjacent types like fashion drill sergeant Kelly Cutrone. Rick seems substantially enriched by this glamorous and deadened, Bret Easton Ellis-inspired world, but also barely connected to it.
He floats through most of his interactions with a noble indifference as though he truly were the “young prince” mentioned in the mythical story (taken from the Gnostics’ Acts of Thomas) that makes up one of the film’s competing voiceovers. If Rick is the prince of the kingdom, then his father would be king. There is something Lear-like in the muttering wreck that is his father Joseph (Brian Dennehy), not to mention the black shadow that his presence throws across Rick’s life, much like the pall cast by Brad Pitt over the otherwise happy family in Tree of Life. With the introduction of Wes Bentley, playing Rick’s rambling and possibly cleaned-up addict of a brother, and references to a tragic incident from the recent past, the film provides some hint of what has kicked Rick’s anomie and epic disinterest into high gear. Needless to say, however, Knight of Cups doesn’t explain causes and effects anywhere in its infinity loop. Malick’s self-indulgences push the limits of just how far a film can coast on unanswerable koans, improvisational pop-profundities, and Lubezki’s poetic camerawork.
And yet, it casts a beautiful baffling spell, nonetheless.knight of cups | We all know how critical it is to keep independent voices alive and strong online. Please consider a donation to support our work as an independent publisher devoted to the arts and humanities. Your donation will help PopMatters stay viable through these changing and challenging times where advertising no longer covers our costs. We need your help to keep PopMatters publishing. Rovio is a game company that flew to new heights in the merchandising business, successfully launching a slew of tie-ins to its bestselling mobile game franchise from the very early days. With a Hollywood feature film hitting the big screen on May 20, Rovio and Sony Pictures are pulling out all of the stops. In total, more than 100 partners worldwide are coming together to deliver $250 million in promotional value to both The Angry Birds Movie and the new Angry Birds Action! For example, McDonald’s is launching a themed Happy Meal program to 120 markets worldwide, which will include exclusive codes for the pinball-themed game (which ties into the movie).
From interactive movie posters embedded with game codes to an in-theater sound technology that unlocks exclusive content, Rovio and Sony Pictures are letting the birds fly early. Wilhelm Taht, executive vice president of games at Rovio, explains how the new game and movie will tap into its global fan base in this exclusive interview. We’re adding an augmented reality experience to some of the movie partners through BirdCode technology, where you scan codes provided by partners like LEGO, H&M, McDonald’s, and Pez. They’re pushing out both the Angry Birds Action! game and the movie over the next month. Over a billion BirdCodes are going out into the wild over the next month. We’re taking a big partnership approach that’s in tune with the movie itself. After you get to Level 2 in the game, you can start entering codes. There are more than two dozen unique BirdCode experiences that have been developed within Angry Birds Action!. For example, each of the six LEGO Angry Birds play sets come with their own different augmented reality mini-game, which is unlocked by scanning the BirdCode found on the last page of the building instructions.
You can play a Whack-a-Pig mini-game by scanning codes on McDonald’s Happy Meals, drink cups, wrappers, and tray liners and also take selfies with characters from The Angry Birds Movie. Designs on H&M apparel include BirdCodes that unlock an endless runner mini-game starring Red, Chuck, or Bomb. Virtual Pez candies can be unlocked in the game by scanning codes on Angry Birds Movie PEZ dispensers. Even The Angry Birds Movie posters have codes on them. There’s a real-world scavenger hunt through retailers like Walmart and Toys ‘R’ Us, which will have codes on display. Scanning them unlocks additional power-ups and a different character (Red, Chuck, Bomb, or a Pig) that provides a key to a mystery box in the game. It’s a pinball arcade game that’s the first game featuring the movie characters in full 3D glory. From a storyline and folklore point of view, takes place before the Piggies have arrived at Bird Island. At the end credits, the game prompts you to open up Angry Birds Action!.
There’s an audio watermark that unlocks and opens up the Piggy Island level. It also unlocks an alternate ending to the movie. Normally you’d see something at the end of the credits, but we’re doing that exclusively in-game. You don’t need any online connection to make this “movie magic” work. It will work later for the DVD and Blu-ray, but we may have some additional tricks up our sleeves for the home edition. We’re catering to diehard fans with some of these things, providing something unique and fun for fans of the movie and the Angry Birds. It’s at the top of the charts across the globe and it’s been rated high by users worldwide. Sony’s promotional program is directed towards the movie, as it does with “triple-A” Hollywood blockbuster movies. The game has been a unique aspect of the whole program, and has received a lot of additional spend from marketing partners. We have a big licensing program that’s been running for the movie for a long time already.
There are quite a bit of licensees out there. There’s a huge number of licenses working on movie assets for the Angry Birds brand, as well. The new birds have arms and legs, so consumer products will look and feel different than they used to. I’m not going to comment on other movies. But in general, video games have been a challenging thing to take to the big screen for a wide variety of reasons. One of the biggest challenges is the narrative has not always been fantastic in video games, and it’s challenging to translate that into an interesting story that runs for 90 minutes. Also, it’s oftentimes a very hardcore story. Big video game brands are often weapon-aggressive and have a hardcore background that can be challenging to bring to big screen. We have over 3.5 billion downloads of the franchise and over 100 million active players worldwide. The movie is a very tongue-in-cheek, humorous, four-quadrant, family-friendly film. Telling the origin story of how this struggle between the pigs and birds began has been resonating on a global basis.