Knight of Cups | DVD review - Terrence Malick's impressionistic drama starring Christian Bale

Knight Of Cups Terrence Malick Cate Blanchett Christian Bale
(Image credit: Melinda Sue Gordon)

A masterpiece is how some viewers greeted Terrence Malick’s impressionistic drama starring Christian Bale; for others, it’s self-indulgent twaddle. The jury is still out.

Christian Bale plays a philandering Hollywood screenwriter looking for love and searching for a sense of self amid the fleshpots of Los Angeles and Las Vegas in Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups . He drifts from one party to the next; one woman to another (Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Freida Pinto, Imogen Poot and Teresa Palmer are among his conquests). How you respond to his quest, however, will be a matter of taste.

For some, Malick’s impressionistic drama is a masterpiece; for others, it’s self-indulgent twaddle. Yet if you can cope with elliptical imagery and dialogue, fragmentary voice-overs and a complete absence of plot, then the film’s sensual and sometimes ecstatic images, rhythmically edited to rhapsodic classical music, prove curiously mesmerising.

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Certificate 15. Runtime 114 mins. Director Terrence Malick

Knight of Cups is available on Digital Download and is released on Blu-ray & DVD on 22 August, courtesy of Studio Canal.

Extras:

  • Press Conference Berlin Film Festival 2015
  • Red Carpet Interviews
  • Featurette

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bC-3rnv_b3o

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Jason Best

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.