I love Terrence Malick movies because they operate on such a different wavelength from anything else out there. Even when compared with other non-narrative films something works differently.

Knight of Cups is "about" a guy who forgets who he is in a land of excess. Or maybe he never knew who he was? Who knows. Like other late career Malick movies, it is a series of semi-connected shots and montages overlaid with quiet music and softly spoken words. With the exception of a short trip to Vegas, the shots are all around Los Angeles. The ones that stood out the most to me were the shots of beaches. I love beaches.

That is where the special nature of Malick's movies comes in. They are empty of characters, scenes, and even a clear artistic thesis. They ask us the viewers to fill the shots with meaning, thought, and feeling. Malick doesn't make a movie about Rick or whatever Christian Bale's character is called, he makes a movie about you and me. When a line is spoken it doesn't move the plot along, but it gives us a few words to stew upon and then transform into our own thoughts.

Another thing I always liked about Malick's films is that you don't "like" or "dislike" them in the way you do many other films. You "connect" or "fail to connect". Certain sequences or images work for some people but not others. For example, Malick's family stuff doesn't work for me (which is a large part of why I can't get into The Tree of Life) so I bounced off of the sequences with Rick's brother and father. The scenes of romance intertwined with beaches connected greatly with me, in part because they made me think about and contemplate my adolescent romances that took place on and around beaches.

Knight of Cups is peak Malick. A beautiful film.