The "Knight of Cups" Pastiche Tease
Monday, December 15, 2014 at 8:22PM I understand that people are talking about the Malick teaser today? I feel stymied by this one (shockingly I'm a "no" at first glance so I'm skipping the traditional YNMS) but I shall share a few thoughts. Mostly, though, I feel Cate Blanchett sums it all up for me in her early teaser line-reading. So long as you pretend that she's me and I'm talking to Terrence Malick instead of Wandering Bale Sun-Logged in the Egyptian Desert Hollywood Wilderness...
You're so different these days. What's going on with you?
Between the club music and what looks like a mash-up of several very familiar -- though I can't quite place them -- films, I just don't get it. Something about this Knight of Cups teaser smells like selling out. By which I mean there's a strong whiff that that is also happening thematically as Christian Bale goes Hollywood and loses himself in decadence and luxury and money and La-La land. But perhaps the love of a good one can savzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Splash with me cold water. I rise!
The world has thousands of movies about angsty grown men behaving badly and then trying to find themselves. If that's where busy Malick, who was once such a vanishing iconoclast, is going how shall I find the will to live? (Other than by ignoring the movie). I much prefer Malick movies when they're about the way grass moves in the wind or the haunted but peaceful look of soldiers who will probably lose everything or the impossibly opaque resplendent close-ups stares of flat-haired enigmatic women with older troubled men who don't seem to understand them or inhabit the great outdoors in the same way.
The other thing I find so strange about this trailer is it feels like a pastiche of Lubeszki's & Malick's (and other movies) greatest hits: Ooh The Tree of Life. Oooh, that fascinatingly obtuse seaside Birdman cutout again. Psycho. Fish-eyed lenses from ___ and Neon hallucinatory clubs from Enter the Void? Or maybe a quick vacation with Sofia Coppola at her favorite lux hotel in California. Oooh, another Tree of Life sweeping vista or vertical sweep skyscraper interior. Hey Bale as Penn who is The Narrator of Life lost man who is also the little boy. People juxtaposed against giant projections like lifted from that shot in Broken Embraces which was lifted from that shot in I forgot. Whatzat, Natalie Portman closely juxtaposed with a pink Closer wig.
Thank you. My name is Jane.
The imagery rush is intoxicating to a degree (gorgeous imagery since Malick/Lubezki are incapable of anything else) but without context it's rather like skipping through Chivo's instagram account while various actors angst at you in voiceover. Which, hey, has it's place don't get me wrong.
But you don't need three Oscar winners for that.
I skipped To the Wonder after the reviews so I'll wait for reviews on this one.
You?
Reader Comments (36)
Parts reminded me of scenes from The Great Beauty, Spring Breakers and even, Goodbye to Language. I don't see it as a selling out, I see it as Malick hitting the modern age and, additionally, hitting back at the growing amount of imitators from big screen to small screen to commercials that are cribbing him. I don't really see pastiche in their own works, with exceptions to beach shots, but, rather, getting with the 21st century twist on his work that keep popping up.
Why be hostile to a man who seems to be branching out? Especially when it completely contradicts much of his recluse tendencies.
Why is it "shockingly" a no if you didn't even bother watching his last movie?
Malick landing in the modern age, telling a story of the spiritual emptiness of the 1%, in the pure cinema style he's developed with Lubeszki and his editing team, is a thrilling prospect, and this is obviously going to be one of the cinematic events of 2015. Frankly, I find the reaction here and elsewhere to be depressing, but typical. Malick peels off a few more of his fans with each successive movie. A lot of people just want him to remake Days of Heaven over and over. Thank God he is still pushing himself.
I loved "Tree of Life" and liked "To the Wonder"
This one has Cate Blanchett in it and she's already giving a great performance in the trailer so I'm on board :P
Best thing is (now that she's evidently made the final cut) Blanchett has now officially bested every actor out there in the DIRECTORS department. The collection of names is exceptional.
I'm all over this one, for all the obvious reasons, starting with the stars of I'm Not There.
I'm going to see this and To the Wonder is an amazing film. Flawed but certainly mesmerizing.
Oh no. I must be some sort of dim philistine because I was reaaallly taken with this trailer. I love Cate, I love that the film threatens to be unsuitable for the epileptic.
But yes, something does smack of familiarity here. . .
Perhaps the direction is just synchronising with the ways of the main dude, you know: flash, fanny, repeat!
Oh no. I must be some sort of dim philistine because I was reaaallly taken with this trailer. I love Cate, I love that the film threatens to be unsuitable for the epileptic.
But yes, something does smack of familiarity here. . .
Perhaps it is just the direction synchronising with the ways of the main dude, you know: flash, fanny, repeat!
No.
Malick, to my mind, gets a little bit worse with every film: Badlands > Days of Heaven > Thin Red Line > The New World > The Tree of Life > To The Wonder. The early exciting films have been drained of their tension and characters, drop by bulbous drop, each film a little less bearable than the one before it, drip, drip, dripppppp, ppppfffttttttt......
The trailer looks likes something that has been rehashed for the umpteen times - a man who lost his soul and tried to get it back in due course. If nothing else, I'll just watch it because of Cate. I don't think I'll be expecting a film close to the quality of his earlier ones like Days Of Heaven and Thin Red Line, both of which I found thoroughly inspiring.
It's exciting to see him be so modern and I like that he's pushing himself out of the period pieces but the one he did about the Austin music scene seems more like an interesting storytelling premise than this one. Blah, I don't care about Christian Bale running around being pensive about this woman or that one.
Also, when is his celestial doc Voyage of Time coming out? Cate replaced Emma Thompson as one of the narrators so there's something cooking at least and it's definitely happening and not just sitting around, right?
To The Wonder was just okay. Gorgeous, they all are, but the narrative really never took off for me. Also, the cast was on the dull side.
I'm always baffled when people say Badlands is his best work. It's him at his most tightly restrained and he's still developing some style and where's the fun in that? Days of Heaven, The New World and Tree of Life is where I lead people when they ask if they should get into his work.
I don't feel remotely comfortable with the notion of a cinephile skipping a Malick movie.
Malick is a bit like Almodovar, ie. you know "I'm So Excited" will be a terrible movie, but you still go see it, for chrissakes. Because it's an Almodovar
I don't like watching trailers so I don't know how bad/great Knight of Cups looks. But for what it's worth - To the Wonder? One of the best films of the decade. You were reading the wrong reviews, Nathaniel.
I liked To the Wonder. I don't think it's a good movie but it totally worked for me as a yoga session (despite Rachel McAdams).
I'm going to echo a few others in saying that I really enjoyed To The Wonder. It seemed like a fragment rather than an entire film, but still a very interesting one asking questions about what happens when we realise these beautiful, ethereal women are real people underneath, what happens when we search for the sublime in the every day and how we're constantly setting ourselves up for disappointment.
Knight Of Cups I'll see regardless. Despite the Sean Penn sections of Tree of Life, Malick has never done anything that feels as 'modern' (To The Wonder sort of could have been set in any time period), so this feels interesting to me. And I'm super intrigued as to how Cate Blanchett fares with Malick. Doesn't she seem like a weirdly atypical casting choice for him?
Am I wrong to love To The Wonder? It was heartbreaking.
Yeah, I don't know what reviews you were reading, but To the Wonder was just stunning, and a wonderfully complicated look at romance.
This is a little bit different than I (or anyone) was expecting, but Malick's name On the director's chair is a "hell yes" for me. I mean, I was one of the thirty or so people who actually saw The Better Angels and there it was just a producer's credit.
Yay! More bloated, self-indulgent drivel! Can't wait!
LOL you let reviewers dissuade you from watching a movie by a film master? That's disconcerting.
Try and read Reverse Shot's texts on To the Wonder then, might change your easily inflluenced mind!
(but yes, the trailer sucks and the film looks very familiar already)
Holy mother of Malick, that trailer is awesome! I want to see more of that driveway scene with Cate and Christian right now!
Gustavo -- eh. Reverse Shot is sometimes a struggle for me. They are so hateful about movies they don't like and so worshipful about movies they do. It's like Slant a bit in that way. I think because i'm not an extremist (i even love pieces of movies I don't care for as a whole) those kinds of critical persona are tougher for me.
Goran & Gustavo -- Here's my rule of thumb, as anti-typical notions of cinephila as it may seem, I NEVER trust positive film reviews of works by filmmakers that are widely considered infallible gods by critics. I don't trust them because the worship level is actually impossible to extract from in-review opinion. It's the reason (i cannot be convinced otherwise) that Clint Eastwood ends up on top ten lists every year no matter what he made in that given year be it shite or pretty good or great. Malick is one of those filmmakers. He could film a pile of dung for two hours and someone would put it on their top ten list.
I'm not knocking worship of filmmakers -- i have my pets too (though usually i'm willing to acknowlege when they stumble (I have such trouble with Almodovar's Broken Embraces for example which just seems so forced/overworked) -- but I think it's generally unwise to trust critics when it comes to "masters" unless the reviews are negative (when it's not cool to be on that person) or measured as in "this movie is good but..."
Ben 1283 -- i dont see Blanchett as atypical for him. He actually prompted that tweet i wrote the other day on the haphazhard casting of A list auteurs. Many of them don't seem to have true opinions about actors. They just are like 'give me the famous ones at this moment. i'm cool with that'. I trust directors who have their own casting sense much more than directors who cast by 'who's hot'... which is why I generally prefer directors who reuse actors from film to film. It means they actually like that person's work! I'd argue that it's fairly easy to trace Woody Allen's downfall to the time frame when he stopped having a repertory company and started being like "who you got for me that's hot right now that has a two month window?"
What a relief to see Christian Bale looking hot and sexy again! I was sure all the diets had done permanent damage to his body.
As for Malick, I still think "Tree of Life" is his masterpiece, probably followed by "Days of Heaven." I didn't like "Badlands" when I watched it recently; Martin Sheen wasn't very good. Malick, being such a visual artist, sometimes relies too much on the looks of his actors, rather than letting charisma come from what the film is doing. Affleck was just hopeless in "To the Wonder," as if he had no idea what to do as an actor.
reminded me of the 'auteur' film playing in cannes during that mr. bean movie.
This trailer looks like a parody of a Terrence Malick movie, but To the Wonder was great and you should definitely watch it. It's superior to The Tree of Life, for one.
I'm not a big Malick fan, but I appreciate his talent. I find his films uneven and often more quantity than quality, but......when he connects with an actor (Nolte in Thin Red Line) it can be a beautiful thing and I think he and Blancett could make magic together. Bale, on the other hand, can be all surface and self interest so I'm not so sure I want to sit through that.
I actually liked this trailer more than I thought I would (visually it is stunning), but the story has been done to death. Is there anything new to bring to the surface or is it just an exercise in repetition?
His films are reminding me more and more of fragrance commercials, and not just any perfume spot, but those deadly-serious, black-and-white Calvin Klein fragrance commercials that were everywhere in the '90s and early '00s...and widely lampooned/laughable at that (save ScarJo's, which was delicious).
If I want to watch an auteur's fabulous rendition of a perfume spot, I'll revisit Baz Luhrman's Chanel N°5 short with Nicole Kidman and/or Dior's '11 mash-up with Charlize Theron and a bevy of Golden Age Hollywood screen goddesses.
I've been sitting on this one, trying to parse out just how I feel about it. Because, stunning as the VISUALS of the trailer are, the AURAL component is a lot of the same, whether it's from Malick specifically or just things we've all heard a million times before in general. But just watching it again, I think that I'm definitely in. Yes the story has been to death, but I think Malick could bring an interesting, different take on it, and even if he may borrow some visual ideas from elsewhere, I have very little doubt that in his and Lubezki's hands they will feel fresh/better. It also looks much more exciting/fast-paced than Malick usually is, and I'm curious to see how he works with that.
There's always the chance that this trailer is totally counter to what the film actually ends up being, though, in which case I may have to change my mind on this one.
Directors agree to major names populating their ensembles to secure financing. Allen movies rarely did the business they do now, and Malick may have had only one financial hit (Tree of Life)? Film is a business more so than any other performance based medium.
Strange, but I don't like watching trailers anymore. I used to love them. Why the change? Do I hate all the spoilers? Or do I hate how they try to make all movies look the same, i.e., an overly serious spoken warning, a snarky aside, the stage of battle, maybe an anguished look from a beautiful female. Is it the sameness that I'm recoiling from?
More on point: I love The New World and Tree of Life, but I still can't bring myself to watch the new Malick trailer.
Cash, I rarely watch trailers, but I was pretty sure that this one wouldn't spoil the actual film for me, and it didn't. Like the new Spike Lee trailer (!), it provided a lot of impressions, but I have no idea what to expect from the whole experience.
It looks like a European art house movie from the 60's- gorgeous photography- intriguing
@Nathanial R -- This is really interesting, and not something I'd really considered before, but you're dead on. I do think Terrence Malick seems an atypical Blanchett role, though. I know that she pretty much played the very definition of ethereal in LotR, but those sort of wispy female roles Malick often seems to favour doesn't read with what I think of when I think of her.
/3rtful -- I'm afraid everything you're saying is wrong. I don't mean to be rude but i find these misunderstandinsg are common nowadaways when it comes to boxoffice where today's numbers are artificially inflated by high ticket prices and inflated also by the amount of box office coverage there is that exists.
what you're saying about WOODY ALLEN in particular is categorically false. His movies were far more successful when he had his repertory company in place. Annie Hall was a MAINSTREAM smash hit for example. movies that today would be lucky to make 5 million like MANHATTAN and INTERIORS and RADIO DAYS also did very well. adjust for inflation and you'll find that Woody Allen was masintream popular in the 1970s and to a lesser extent in the 1980 & still popular though no sure thing in the early 1990s. Even the shaky cam low lit mean spirited (but brilliant ) HUSBANDS AND WIVES released in the midst of the Woody/Mia scandal and greeted with much ire (and less Oscar attention than usual) absolutely flattens the new star-driven MAGIC IN MOONLIGHT, for example, if you adjust for inflation (if you don't they made almost the exact same amount of money 22 years apart.)
Also THE TREE OF LIFE is hardly Malick's 'only' hit. his recent box office goes like so:
1. THE THIN RED LINE $39 million
2. TREE OF LIFE (big stars in lead roles) $13 million
3. NEW WORLD $12 million
4. THE WONDER (big stars in lead roles) $.5 million
Hardly supporting the theory that casting big stars helps the auteur. The only time casting big stars invariably helps auteurs is when those auteurs are the type of auteurs that already have a mainstream showman living inside of them (the O. Russells / Luhrmanns / Scorseses / Nolans of the world) because in those cases, A list casting feels organic.
Technically speaking Malick has zero hits. Unless his production budgets are five dollars. Distributors and financiers are losing money on him. And since he is not an awards magnet the stars are keeping him relevant for financiers to keep financing. He needs stars more so than Woody Allen.
"Nobody understood Tree of Life. I'll make it again with Christian Bale."
No thanks.
I have watched the trailer so many times already! It blew my mind the first couple of times. I am a hardcore Malick fan and the only movie of his I haven't seen is Days of Heaven
Its like a dream come true when Blanchett made the cut and doing her impro in a Malick movie. She is out of this world and paired with Bale, the movie is gonna rock! I believe Portman is the weakest link here
I watch a movie no matter how bad the critics are bashing the movie of a master or not. I saw the last one by Almodovar. Its not his greatest but it is still Almodovar. To The Wonder is a good movie and Olga Kurylenko gave a stunning performance. The awakening trailer music is to die for beautiful!
Because the master is my darling, our relationship will be rocky and sometimes bad, but mostly my master will give me the most joyful ride ever. Even in the bad movies, a master director will always give me cinematic pleasure
So its more about you Nathaniel then the critics. And certainly not the master. He will go on and make other movies. It is for you to decide whenever you wanna join him, no matter the result and trust his vision
This is kind of exciting to me. I've always loved how divisive Malick is - it is a sign of the quality and genuineness of his artistry. People might also be harder on him because so much is expected of him.
What troubles me is how quickly some of his fans abandoned him following To the Wonder. The film was so gorgeous I have trouble grasping the almost uniform revulsion to what registered to me as a worthy, interesting, harmless experiment that might not have made for a good "movie" but certainly wasn't an atrocity by any means (although this group of commentators certainly seemed to enjoy it). I admit that the running and the twirling were a little silly, but it's interesting to me how quick most of the people I know who saw it were to reject images of wholehearted, unabashed, childlike revelry (including myself in moments). I have observed that sometimes in cinema earnest sincerity can make viewers uncomfortable (e.g., The Fountain).
So far, the trailer already contains more interesting images than the entirety of To the Wonder, so I feel like it holds more promise on the most basic visual level. The cast seems interesting, Blanchett is usually great, I appreciate that he is going modern... For me, Malick's films are like a perspective, a way of seeing that I really respond to and feel aligned with, and I want to see as many different types of subjects as possible through that very specific lens. This change in content is refreshing and exciting, so I am a 100% Yes after viewing the trailer.
I am a long-time devotee of Malick, but I am also able to admit that To the Wonder was his weakest effort. However, most film makers, even the best film makers, make duds from time to time. The Thin Red Line, Days of Heaven, and The Tree of Life were all major films that have had quite an impact on the cinematic community/art form. It's possible that Malick could be spiraling into a Francis Ford Coppola-style point of no return, but I don't think it's quite time to write him off completely. I think the issue with To the Wonder is that for many people it verged on self-parody - it highlighted how close Malick can come to being overblown and may have underlined some of his pitfalls. I'm sure for most people it's hard to shake that. Still, I think Malick deserves a couple more glances before assuming that he's lost his talent or that he's been a hack all along.
Additionally, I don't think all critics would worship Malick even if he were to film a pile of dung, and the love for him has always seemed far less irrational than the inexplicably overwhelming adoration of Eastwood's supposed series of masterpieces. I also have trouble comparing the two because they have such different backgrounds. Eastwood seems to get the benefit of the doubt a lot because people just love Clint Eastwood the Actor. He's like this Ideal American Man's Man, and look! He can hold a camera and throw together a score, too! I guess we should give him Oscars. Malick, on the other hand, is a recluse with a background in journalism and philosophy who appears to strive towards something a little deeper. I have always gotten the impression that Malick is a love-it-or-hate-it kind of director. To the Wonder, The New World, and even The Thin Red Line weren't as uniformly embraced by critics (at least at the time of release) as Days of Heaven or The Tree of Life. I was also 9 years old when The Thin Red Line came out, so I could be wrong. If I remember correctly, The New World and To the Wonder weren't regular staples on a majority of year-end lists (To the Wonder was probably completely absent).
Anywho, my basic point is... it would be a bummer to me if someone with as much ambition and raw talent as Malick was written off so quickly. I think someone with a track record like his deserves a little more optimism. However, this film does look like an overt indictment of the industry. This could piss off a lot of people, and the sincerity makes him an easy target. Ah well, we shall see what happens.
Apologies for such a long post. I have nothing to do at work today, and I usually have way too much to say about T-Mal. ;)
At the beginning of the trailer I was loving the idea of a Malick film in an urban setting, but by the end I was already like "meh, more of the same." Plus the story, as you point out, isn't exactly enticing.
I'm a Maybe.