"Like Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania, Jonas Mekas's filmed expedition to a family gathering in his homeland, Terrence Malick's Knight of Cups operates like a diary film, right down to the use of chapter titles to organize the plethora of footage recorded in Los Angeles. Where Mekas soberly planted day markers into his impressionistic sprawl, Malick gives us tarot card-inspired slates like “Judgment” and “The Tower” to loosely contextualize the wanderings of a melancholy hedonist, Rick (Christian Bale), who's less a conventional character than a mute compass for Malick and DP Emmanuel Lubezki's exploratory camera. And while Mekas's project sprang from a desire, as an expat middle-aged New Yorker whose tender disposition always seemed at odds with his hectic city of residence, to reconnect with his familial heritage, the latest from American cinema's mild-mannered outsider also functions rather transparently as an act of self-therapy." Review continues at Slant.
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