Some thoughts on how to view "Knight of Cups"

If you don't give what you have in your mind, heart, and soul to Terrence Malick's most recent film, it might come off like Willem Dafoe's laughable movie in "Mr. Bean's Holiday." If you do give all of yourself to this film and you still find it empty and pretentious, then perhaps you need to explore the notion that you have forgotten what is important in life and beyond. Do you look downwards to earthly matters and mere materialism, or do you look up to the sky as a limping bird does - yearning to get back up there?

In a dreamlike series of images, sounds, words and actions, "Knight of Cups" unfolds as a poem. An odd form for a movie - we're used to stories in films being told dramatically, or like novels. Three acts. A to B to C to Z. Malick has been attempting, especially in his last few films, to tell basic truths about flesh and spirit, nature and grace, living for the moment vs. living as a prologue to something better. Like all good art, you must add your own story, thoughts, memories and wisdom to what is presented to you. No, I'm not a well-off Hollywood screenwriter who looks like Christian Bale and courts beauties like Freida Pinto and Natalie Portman, but I identified with Bale's character's dilemma. Malick is reminding us of the age-old question: What good is it to gain the world, but lose your soul? So the "perfume-ad" glamour of his (and D.P. Emmanuel Lubezki)'s stunning images and women is necessary - we need to see the highest end of pleasure, happiness and comfort this world can offer us, and still note it's a shadow of greater things.