****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
An enticing film for those who want to escape into a dream of being in the visually seductive, dramatic, hedonistic, endless-party worlds of Hollywood and Palm Springs, though there is a more serious message for those observant enough to see it.I am drawn to the dream-like quality of the film, achieved both by the wide-angle quick shots, which of course also mirrors a reality of perception when you are in those high-energy places like New York or Los Angeles, particularly when you are high. The dream like nature is also achieved by the voice-overs, some of which are whispers, or urgent statements seemingly made by the main figure to himself. For many viewers, this will be reminiscent of so many moments in their own lives, when just starting to get high, either from that first or second gulp of strong brandy, or from something else, when the whole of life seemed all of a sudden very clear and present, and a distant whisper, a thought, a memory, or their higher power, seemed trying to bring an important thought into consciousness.But just as portrayed in the movie, in real life these moments quickly fade, and you find yourself out of the dream, back to reality, to chaos and confusion, and to being tired, or anxious, exhausted or fed up, with other people pulling at you, shouting at you, walking away from you, hiding from you, or enticing you, which makes it hard to make sense of either the internal or external voices.The movie does portray this transition well, with something of a moral lesson, like a medieval morality play, that says while we all want to be in that clear dreamlike space, as we become more experienced and mature, we no longer want the dissipations of drugs or alcohol; thus the movie is both seductive, and a reminder of that bit of wisdom, "Don't! You've done this, over done this, and it always worked out badly, the dissipation and the bad decisions and regret about making them, and your life if full of challenges right now that you need to be sober to deal with."Knight of Cups is about a young middle-aged man who has so much privilege and success, with so many choices in his life and career that he ends up in a kind of merry-go-round of sensations, experiences, love affairs, who finds himself alienated from his family, his wife, lovers, and himself. Too many lovers, girlfriends, and a wife competing for his attention, too much internal emotional turmoil, too much confusion in the moment about his conflicted relationship with his brother and father, and about the business offers people are making him. This is a man running away from the life he is living while he is in the midst of it.I found myself, and suspect many viewers, too will, trying to sort out the various threads in the main character's life, and trying to determine which ones were really important to him, because the truth, and telling the truth becomes finally very important in this film, as an antidote to the illusions.This is a movie whose impact is best produced by seeing it at least twice. In the first viewing, watching the main character, seeing all the women he is chasing or amusing himself with at the strip clubs, bars, and hotels, the ex-wife, the lovers, and prostitutes, might seem seductively alluring or picaresque, though I suspect that during the second viewing, or certainly the third, most will feel a numbness and impatience, as he fails to appreciate more the beauty and significance of life, seeking motion and thrill, rather than achievement and substance. It is as if he has become so used to acting a role from behind a veil that he no longer sees the veil.Another aspect of the film that is reminiscent of real life, and of virtually every "normal" person who has ever lived on the planet, is that so many of the key moments in the film occur when the main character is with other people, and in such a whirl with them, that it seems confusing to the character, as to the viewer, how much of the situation he is really taking in, how much he understands about his own situation, as opposed to how much energy he is spending just dealing with the people around him, fending them off, pushing them aside, or trying to draw closer to them.While there are times when he is alone, confronting stark reality, the earthquake scene in his bedroom, or driving in his car, speaking to homeless people on the street, he is usually with someone else, trying to cope with or trying to take advantage of what they are saying or doing, while also trying to sort out what is going on in his own life on a deeper level.The late author and popular philosopher Peter Matthiesen, who plays himself in the film, says, "Now I teach focusing on the moment, for there is in it everything you need. It is perfect." Many viewers may disagree, as I do with this advice, preferring a more Heideggerian approach to life, something like, "When you truly understand how you got to this place in this moment, then you will be able to understand and appreciate yourself in this moment, but until then, however much you try to appreciate and draw in the moment, you will not understand it, or your place in it. And therefore, you will not know what to do."Matthiesen's advice is clearly very subjective and seductive, and perhaps, good advice, but for me, again, only if in that moment that you focus on the moment, can you understand who you are and how you got to that place.Though ultimately cloying, the hedonistic dream-like scenes are enticing, as in very few films, and I will probably watch it several more times just for those scenes. These remind me of Julie Christie's "Darling," of John Cassavetes's "Ghosts," and of another Terence Malick film, "Tree of Life."If there is a moral to this film, it can be seen in the message Cate Blanchett's character (the ex-wife) offers. While she too is quite successful, as a medical trauma specialist, her attitude toward life, and the clearly tragic consequences she sees through her work, is much more serious. Her married life, she tells him, as they get together again as friends, consisted of his non-presence, for he was always, even when with her, obviously thinking about, if not flirting with other women, leaving her with no desire to be in a relationship with him again. He even recalls a scene in flashback when she became enraged at the irony of his criticizing her, and having threatened to leave her.This message clearly saddens him, but as a man who is still stumbling through a hedonistic jungle tangled with temptations and delights, he is unable, now that he wants to find stability and constancy, to grasp it, much less to even recognize it. In this aspect, the Knight's experience is similar to Michael Fassbender's role in "Shame," and perhaps, to the Jeremy Irons role in "Damage."A more apt title for this film might have been "Page of Cups," or "Knight of Cups Reversed," for while the Christian Bale character is literally a grown man, his life and attitudes are closer to those of a boy, a Peter Pan figure, who is playing with life, rather than taking it seriously. As such, this film could be seen as a condemnation of the superficialities and apparent lack of commitment to more essential traditional values, a malady we see in so many societies around the world today, and I suppose always have.Given the strong political divisions that exists around the world now between liberal and conservative, the sharp differences voiced by those on opposite sides of the educational and cultural divides, I suspect that many conservatives who view this film will miss its moral message, and merely react, condemning it as celebrating the immorality of their less uptight, more open, possibly more experienced, liberal peers, though it clearly does not.
