Knight of Cups - Notes

Knight of Cups (2015)

My third viewing in just over a year. I'm edging closer and closer to confirming this as my favourite Malick film and arguing that it may be his magnum opus. Whilst I'll always understand peoples critiques of Knight of Cups being the equivalent of a two-hour perfume commercial, there's a certain hypnotic quality about it that just keeps pulling me back to it. The only thing left from holding me back from giving it a five out of five is the ever so slightly underwhelming ending, and that it could do with being cut down by fifteen to twenty minutes - but Malick's gorgeous touch shines through.

It's the perfect film for when you're feeling lost. The cinematography is obviously unbelievably gorgeous, but it's not just a surface level aesthetic value. The disillusionment and detachment our protagonist feels are expressed perfectly through the free-flowing and often muted socialising scenes and mundane activities - the visuals pull and put us in the position of the observer, and yet like our protagonist, we feel like we're not really there.

The frequent references about how Rick is existing in an almost comatose state - an unconsciousness - almost asleep. How out of touch with life he has become - how lost he has become - often triggered by his decadent lifestyle and surface-level pleasure pursuits, how hollow they are, the lack of actual fulfilment he achieves. His pursuit of transcendence through others - often women he falls in love with - the same ones he inevitably pushes away due to the pressure of his expectations - all of this fuelled by his fear to look within himself. He's afraid.

The core message is as poetic and unconstrained as Malick's approach, it's about the pure potential is always "beginning" - trying again, accepting that life is a cycle of repetitious ups and downs, arrivals and departures - for there to be joy, there has to be misery. It's also about the illusions and distractions of contemporary society - how detached from ourselves we can become. And finally, it's about having faith in the absurdity of life.