Knight of Cups: the mourning film of Emile Malick, forgiven by his son
There is just so much things to write on Knight of Cups.
Its glorious, stunning, mesmerizing, unimaginable introduction.
Its style, To the Wonder-like (maybe with shorter shots), but -- that's the difference -- with an uninterrupted flow of voice over.
And at the same time, it is also similar to Jack's wandering in the desert, in a double way: Rick wanders in almost all the settings of his life, in almost all shots of the film, but also, during all the film, Rick is shown wandering in the desert.... almost in a perfect copy of the rock and salt settings around Jack,.
In fact, all the film is a journey in Rick's memory as he wanders in the desert as The Tree of Life was (and probably To The Wonder too).
The two most important thing for me are:
- that, even the shooting took place before Emile Malick death, the way the images and voice over are put together seem to imply that Malick/Rick knows, or has guessed, how much his father, that never said anything probably on the death of his son, has suffered. And this is a way probably of expressing forgiveness for this and forgiveness for the behaviour that lead his son to suicide.
"There is so much love inside of us that can not get out", we hear in the last 20 minutes of the film.
We see at this moment a very old man, Joseph, on his hands and his knees in front of a cross of the Christ, praying with suffering in his voice. Still in his secret mourning.
In fact, all allusions to Joseph/Emile seemed bringing tears to me..
Some minutes before, we had heard from Joseph:
"You think that when you'll get older, you will give meaning to all this. But older, you see it as low as you always have. That the puzzle is still exploded"
The word "blind" of the trailer, is for Joseph.
- the film expresses clearly with litteral words, what the previous film had already expressed for the ones that had accepted to hear and see, as if Malick wanted this time the message be known to anyone (even if most viewers did not probably notice it, and that I am sure, the message that is clearly here won't be heard by most of the reviewers)
This message is always the same, than it was in To the Wonder, The Tree of Life, The New World and The Thin Red Line: seeing the world. Seeing it again, as if it was the first time. Finding again this first sight (the sight of origin we could say in an Heidegerrian way). Seeing it as perfect, as complete. In order that this sight change your own life.
Yet, with Quintana's monologue at the end of To the Wonder, that prayed for us to "see", the message of almost all his works was almost expressed clearly. But probably it has never been expressed so litteraly, clearly than in Knight of Cups.
The film is divided in multiple chapters (almost all of them corresponds to a relationship with a woman):
- The Moon
- The Hanged Man (revelation of Billy's death, years ago)
- The Hermit
- Judgment
- The Tower
- The Sun (the only chapter where it is a card that falls in water, instead of a black panel)
- The High Prietress
- Death
- Paradise
The Knight of Cups card is also seen during the Tarot reading, but impossible to know if it must be interpreted as a chapter.
Interestingly, most of the shots of the trailer are from the first minutes.. they are rarer and rarer as we advance into the film.
This "report" is not a review. It is a very difficult film to review after just one screening. It is so dense, there is so much voice over that it needs time and a lot of screenings probably to write anything valuable.
But from the first second, with the incredible beginning, you know that the film will be higher than what you could have ever expected. It is astonishing. Purely astonishing, the work of a genius, of a visionary, in the true meaning of these overused words.