When examining two artists’ work, writers rarely consider jumping across the media barrier to study themes and trends in art as a whole. Artistry isn’t limited to one form of multimedia, and auteurism can be examined between novelists, filmmakers, musicians, and/or playwrights. After listening to Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo and watching Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups, I couldn’t help noticing similarities in the static energy of both projects, whose many moving parts turned into commotion. Although Malick and West’s creative processes are worlds apart, their evolution as artists can be seen as parallel as they explore spirituality, perfection and challenge the notions of art itself in their polarizing careers. But when comparing their recent output, it seems that they have taken one step beyond the apex of their highest artistic potential. The Life of Pablo and Knight of Cups are problematic works due to how involved they are in their own space, whether it be Malick’s cold, dreamy world or West’s personal heaven—empty of consequences. Both projects present a false sense of grandeur that falls apart on the principle of a weak foundation.

The titles of both The Life of Pablo and Knight of Cups allude to conceptually grand pieces doused in imagery and inspiration. After many assumed that West’s album was alluding to Pablo Picasso or Pablo Escobar, it was a bit of a surprise when West hinted that the titular Pablo may be St. Paul the Apostle. Yet, despite what the album promises, The Life of Pablo gives very little insight into the life of any Pablo, whether it be Picasso, Escobar, the Apostle or an alter-ego of West. In fact, the album meanders from track to track in a shallow and sometimes chaotic way. My first concern when listening to the much tighter 10-track album that premiered at Madison Square Garden was that Pablo wasn’t conceptually innovative unlike Yeezus or My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. That concern is even more grounded in the final album, which includes a lot of songs that feel like bonus tracks.

Knight of Cups central idea is much clearer, but not necessarily better in execution. Malick uses tarot card readings to characterize and split his film into chapters. The Knight of Cups tarot card comes from the “Minor Arcana” deck; when the card is upright it represents opportunities, changes, and new romances, but when the card is turned downward it represents recklessness and a person who has trouble distinguishing right from wrong. Knight of Cups follows Rick as he attempts to flip his attributes while meeting other individuals who represent different cards from the deck. Each of the first seven chapters, all named after a card in the Major Arcana deck, show Rick meandering between romantic flings and family members before finding his inner peace. His turmoil is cleared in the eighth chapter, called “Freedom.” Here, the tarot card concept comes to an abrupt halt—“Freedom” isn’t even a tarot card, yet many of the unused cards could’ve represented the same ideas of Malick’s final chapter. Ultimately, Malick captures the ideas of the cards as superficially as West creates a “Life” for any of his titular “Pablos.” Both works are sprawling and sometimes random, but they’re missing a central, cohesive idea. Though the works never hit a conceptual grandeur, they aren’t thoughtless and have some conceptual ingenuity.

When Knight of Cups and The Life of Pablo reach their thematic potential, they often focus on the same things: spirituality and a quest for perfection or redemption. These are some of the same themes that Malick and Kanye have tackled throughout their careers.

Malick’s work has always been upheld with inspiration from spirituality and religion. The Tree of Life is the epitome of his theological questioning, but To The Wonder and Knight of Cups also examine religion in their exploration of men lost in the worlds they inhabit. Knight of Cups’ spirituality and mystery doesn’t always lend itself to Christianity, but its opening lines come from The Pilgrim’s Progress, a Christian allegory written in 1678 by John Bunyan.

West isn’t unfamiliar to large productions sampling from a multitude of sources; speeches, sermons, and classic songs show up in some form or another throughout The Life of Pablo, along with dozens of other samples. The Life is Pablo’s opening track is “Ultralight Beam,” the most holistic and singular song of the album, which borrows from an Instagram post of a little girl saying, “We don’t want no devils in the house, God.” These words, which open the album, are unexpected from a rap album or a Kanye West album, but they mark a message that is revisited multiple times on The Life of Pablo. “Ultralight Beam” continues in a spiritual direction and, at times, nearly breaks into full gospel, whether it’s because of lyrical content or an actual gospel choir.

In relation to spirituality, West and Malick also explore a divinity in their own characters or personas. In the rap community, West is sometimes viewed as a god. This maybe indicates why The Life of Pablo features an enormous amount of other performers—work from his “disciples.” And while West has stated he’s a Christian, it’s a statement that comes with controversy after tracks like “Jesus Walks” and his album Yeezus, where West often paints himself as a false profit.

On the other hand, Malick takes no claim to be a god among men, but a theme throughout his work is a quest for perfection. This could manifest in striving for a perfect marriage in To The Wonder; a perfect walk with God in The Tree of Life; or Rick’s journey for divinity in Hollywood while finding redemption in Knight of Cups. At Malick’s best, his characters are human and their wonderings are relatable, but this theme of perfection actually provides ammunition to his detractors. Christian Bale wandering through Los Angeles meeting with countless women is, understandably, seen as pretentious and not insightful to the real everyman. Ben Affleck searching for true love through Rachel McAdams or Olga Kurylenko amid airy whispers in To The Wonder comes off as equally shallow and disengaged.

The Life of Pablo and Knight of Cups are hugely spiritual works, albeit in hugely different ways. West’s inward spiritual examination is more on the nose and ironic than Malick’s, yet it is clear that West and Malick take inspiration from a theistic entity—presumably a Christian one—that drives them into exploring divinity or the futility of perfection, respectively. As strong as these ideas were in previous Malick and West joints, it is hard for me to perceive their recent outputs as anything but slight.

Once upon a time, I wasn’t just a casual fan of West and Malick’s work, but their latest offerings have left me questioning their visions and career trajectories. My biggest complaints about their latest work actually relate back to the way the artists react with their audiences when they aren’t behind a camera or a microphone.

Malick’s dissociation from the public eye is evident in his most detached work yet. With Knight of Cups, Malick has lost the touch and understanding of the human condition that actually drove his earlier works. Instead of capturing a relatable story with real characters, Knight of Cups meanders and searches, but the exploration is never more than a surface deep perspective of an uninteresting man.

On the other hand, The Life of Pablo is an album of the moment that’s caught up in the zeitgeist. This is as much of reflection of West’s inward interests as it is a reflection of his every (unfiltered) thought. At times, The Life of Pablo becomes a misaligned musical rant that throws too many half-fleshed out ideas in the form of samples and guests instead of coherence and quality. The album, at its worst, could be compared to West’s twitter persona—scatterbrained, both musically and lyrically.

The Life of Pablo and Knight of Cups both reach moments of grandeur, but these moments only point to a greatness that is usually absent throughout the rest of their works. My initial response to The Life of Pablo was mixed, and as I continue to listen to the album I find it more problematic (but that still hasn’t stopped me from listening). Inversely, my only viewing of Knight of Cups was a chore that left me bored and irritated, but I find myself thinking about it more often than I anticipated.

At the heart of both works is a problem with auteurism. I have previously mentioned that both pieces serve as the strongest sense of vision from the artist, but this vision doesn’t translate into a language most audiences can understand or necessarily want to hear. Yet, on the other side of the spectrum, auteurism bolsters the careers of West and Malick, driving the creativity in both of their recent outputs. The Life of Pablo and Knight of Cups don’t work due to a lack of effort; Malick and West’s visions get lost on a large portion of their intended audience because they are too consumed in their own art.

In his latest movie, Knight of Cups, Terrence Malick asks us to join him, for the third time in a row, on a journey through the meandering thoughts of people lost in life, confessing their innermost moral quandaries to the cosmos as they stumble and crawl across god’s green earth and bask in heavenly sunlight. This time, the setting is Los Angeles, photographed in all its concrete, Art-Deco grandeur by trusted Malick collaborator (and Oscar darling) Emmanuel Lubezki. We follow and listen in on the thoughts of fading movie star Rick (Christian Bale) and, occasionally, his famous friends, as Malick lays out another unbearably thin narrative that’s as deviously frustrating as a 500-piece puzzle with 450 pieces missing. The eminently respected auteur clearly has a firm grip on the art of filmmaking—at his best, he’s one of the greats—but with his work becoming increasingly nebulous and less inviting to audiences, it’s come to the point where patience for his vagaries grows dangerously thin.

In an almost wordless onscreen performance (we hear his voice, but mostly in the form of narration), Bale drifts down the streets of L.A., occasionally jumping in thought to memories from Las Vegas, Century City and Santa Monica. Rick is in a perpetual state of punch-drunk spiritual crisis, surrounded by gorgeous women who glom onto his status, wealth and handsome looks until his emotional ineptness becomes too much to bear, at which point they make way for the next batch of girls to grab at his pants.

Rick’s fleeting romantic partners are played by a dizzying crowd of famous faces: Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Imogen Poots, Teresa Palmer, Freida Pinto, Isabel Lucas and more can now add a Malick film to their resume. The roles are thin—Blanchett plays his ex-wife, Portman plays a fling—but isn’t every role thin in a Malick movie these days? Antonio Banderas makes an appearance a Hollywood playboy who throws a swanky house party littered with real-life celebrities playing themselves (“Look! It’s Joe Manganiello! Nick Kroll! Danny Strong! Wait…Danny Strong? Huh?”). Banderas takes over narration duties for a bit, spouting twisted, misogynist philosophy. “Women are like flavors,” he says in his sumptuous Spanish accent. “Sometimes you want raspberry, but then you get tired of it and you want strawberry.”

Malick does a good job of laying out the monstrous, indulgent allure of showbiz that pulled Rick in and broke him down into the wandering, pulp of a man he is. He’s become a phony, just like all the other soul-sapped leeches overpopulating the trashy town that bred them (to be clear, Angelenos, I mean Tinseltown, or the idea of it, not L.A.). Similarly swallowed by the city is Rick’s brother (Wes Bently), a non-famous drifter whose short temper is inherited from his and Rick’s late father. The particulars of the family drama (and, in fact, most of the particulars of Ricks life) are left for us to imagine on our own, but the quality of Bale and Bentley’s performances helps to form some semblance of an emotional arc.

Some (this writer included) would consider it a duty of a true movie lover to meet the filmmaker halfway when a film’s concepts or ideas are challenging or obscure. But with Malick’s recent work, it feels like he’s not meeting us halfway. We can only give so much of ourselves over to him before his movies start to feel like tedious chores. What’s so tragic about this is that, on a cinematic level, he’s phenomenal: he and Lubezki’s imagery is sweeping, evocative and immaculately conceived. Some moments—like a ground-level shot of Bale taking a knee on the concrete as an earthquake shakes the buildings and people around him—are so exquisite you could cry. But without a deeper sense of cohesion, these cinematic feats start to feel hollow as they pile on top of each other for two hours straight. As with Malick’s last movie, To The Wonder, Knight of Cups topples over, leaving us to sift through a mess of pretty pictures in a desperate search of some morsel of meaning. Like his characters, maybe it’s time for us to wake the hell up.

With today’s announcement of the 2016 Independent Spirit Award nominations and now a new official trailer Terrence Malick‘s highly-anticipated Knight Of Cups, you’ll have plenty to talk about over Thanksgiving dinner with the family this year (wait, Malick isn’t a frequent topic around your table?). Our first glimpse of the film came in the form of a rather cryptic trailer ahead of its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. And surprise, this new trailer doesn’t offer a whole lot of new information (this is a Malick film after all). Though that doesn’t make us any less excited for the film, which features performances from Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Teresa Palmer, and Natalie Portman.

Knight of Cups opens in theaters on March 4, 2016.

In Carlos Marques-Marcet’s 10,000 km, a terrifically acted love story set in the digital age, we follow a couple jumping headlong into a long distance relationship in which technology is the only tether between them. Sergi (David Verdaguer) stays in the couple’s apartment in Barcelona while his girlfriend Alex (Natalia Tena) moves to Los Angeles for a year to further her art career. The story takes place entirely within Sergi and Alex’s respective apartments in Spain and the U.S. as we watch their Skype calls, read their text messages and watch one of them snoop around on Facebook

It’s an incredibly bittersweet movie that conveys perfectly how, despite all the different avenues of communication technology affords us, it actually amplifies the anxieties that come with geographical separation when you’re in love with somebody. It’s the best love story I’ve seen this year.

I spoke to Carlos about the film, which hits San Francisco tomorrow.

I thought the movie’s sound design was done very well.
It’s funny. Nobody has talked to me about it much, but I’m very obsessive with sound. It’s 50 percent of your movie. We shot in Barcelona—the part in Los Angeles, too—so we really wanted to create a soundscape to reflect the whole city just staying in these two rooms. We spent a lot of time recording sounds in Barcelona and Los Angeles. My sound designer researched all of the birds that fly through in every time of the year.

Really? Wow.
At this point, I’m obsessive. Of course nobody’s gonna know. Maybe bird specialists, but not even. But I think it’s these kinds of things that give you that feeling. You don’t know why, but it feels like Los Angeles. It feels like Barcelona. The most important thing was to create this off-screen space. Really minuscule stuff. There’s the sound of the butano gas people who make this *klink klink* sound as they go around outside in Barcelona. Also, it’s important to me to play with the quality of the image and sound. We knew every scene would have a specific sound to the [voices]. Basically, we recorded Skype on both sides so we’d be able to mix how we wanted. [We could make them sound] more metallic or closer as much as we wanted. There are scenes where you start with a very Skype sound, and then they start sounding closer to their natural voices. It’s something you shouldn’t realize; it creates a feeling rather than take attention for itself. You can feel how the characters feel, through the sound.

Another thing we did, if you see it in theaters, is something you almost never do. We played with the surround sound so that the voices come out [from different directions]. You can’t do that with a normal scene—the sound should come from the center, the screen, so that you won’t get distracted by voices coming from somewhere else. But in that scene, when you have the full Skype thing, you feel like you’re actually inside the computer, between the two actors.

Who are some sound designers or filmmakers you look up to?
There’s always Walter Murch as an editor and sound editor. He’s amazing. You can hear any of his music, and it’s like, “Wow!” I’m not a super Terrence Malick fan like my friends, but his sound is unbelievable. You can listen to how specific he is; he does that same thing with the birds. His narrative and images are a bit too much for me, but the way he uses sound is spectacular. There are more classical sound people, like Bresson and Tati. I like to use a more subtle approach to sound, but it’s pretty much the same function.

I read something you said that fascinated me. You said that, when people speak, we typically say much more than we intend to, as if language exists outside of us.
My mother is a psychoanalyst. For most people, psychoanalysis is something you read in a book or something or go to Brown to study. In my case, it’s something I grew up with, so it’s not a very theoretical approach to things. It’s something I experience. We sometimes think that we have thoughts in our mind, and then language transforms them and brings them out and you communicate them. But I feel sometimes you don’t have thoughts until you speak them. That happens very often. When you’re talking, you’re realizing things you didn’t know were there. It’s something created in the process of talking and associating ideas that’s unconscious.

The unconscious is not something that’s so deep. People have this idea that it’s about your mother and father and deep thoughts of killing and things like this. To me, psychoanalysis and Oedipus is a tale to explain how language works and how we function in these structures our minds are built with. It circulates when we begin to communicate, and it’s very tangled. The emotional and the rational aren’t separated. We think because we feel and we feel because we think.

We live in language. When you see a Béla Tarr movie that’s supposed to be non-language, you still see a woman and a man eating potatoes. You have these signs, somehow. You have a social lecture of this, and it brings you to all of these memories of the apocalypse and all these ideas. It’s language. Even if it’s with images, it’s storytelling. We cannot disassociate images and language.

There’s the kind of person who would say that, narratively, not much happens in your film, or in a Béla Tarr film. It frustrates me, because I know there’s a lot going on there—it’s just not spoken by the characters verbally.
I love films that aren’t very narrative. Sometimes I feel like my films are too narrative! [laughs] It’s well-plotted, even if it’s hidden. It’s actually a very classical structure, with three acts. It’s like a classical Hollywood script, if you look at it. It’s presented in blocks. It’s something I try to avoid sometimes, but I just fall into it. I’m very classical in the way I make movies. I did a short of my little cousin kicking a can. Years later, when I learned about the three-act structure, I saw that I just fell with A,B,C,D. It’s just a kid coming home from school, kicking a can. It’s am minimalist adventure film. He finds something on the way, he takes the trip seriously. It’s a hero’s journey. It’s just a kid kicking a can, but in the end, it’s a very classical structure.

I admire my filmmaker friends who go out there and try different things. Inherent Vice, to me, is all plot! [laughs] It’s just the plot doesn’t make any sense, in a good way. I feel like it’s a response to all these people you mentioned who say, “Nothing happened.” Okay. Here’s a movie where lots of things are happening, but it doesn’t mean shit! It’s not about things happening; it’s about it having an arc. I think people misunderstand storytelling and structure. There’s many ways of doing it. Michael Snow is one of my favorites, but he’s very classical at the same time. He makes experimental films that are very narrative; you have repetition, variation. Sometimes narrative is more complex than “things happening.”

I think a lot of your film’s story is communicated through David and Natalia’s body language.
That was actually our starting point. I took dancing classes to prepare for the movie. I was tired of working with the actors through motivation. I wanted to work physically. I was learning a lot of somatic techniques to try to figure out other ways to work with them. We started working with the actors just physically. Dancing was a big component of the movie. Dancing and sex are the two most intimate things a couple can do, I feel. We rehearsed a lot. Every day, before rehearsals, we’d spend half the day doing dancing exercises. I made them do a strip-tease to become comfortable with each other. We were trying to feel out who these people are. When you’ve been with someone for seven years, you have a body language that has a history. We had to find a way to compress this seven years into a week or two weeks! We had to make it feel specific, the way they touched each other.

The last scene is killer. What was it like shooting it?
It was so hard. People ask if it was difficult to do the first scene. That first scene was preparation. I was terrified of the last scene. Terrified. It’s funny, the night before shooting, I watched a lot of sex scenes. [laughs] I was like, “I don’t know what to do!” I had three days to shoot it, and I kept postponing the ending of the scene. The third day, my AD was like, “Carlos, you have eight hours. Carlos, you have six hours. Carlos, you have four hours.” So I had to. Even during rehearsals, I didn’t want to rehearse the ending, but my actors insisted. I couldn’t watch it! They were rehearsing having sex, and they look back, and they’re like, “Where’s the director?!”

It was crazy, because it was happening. We just jumped into it. The actors weren’t blocked because they’d been together for a while. It was very, very intense for the team. The DP was getting married, so a taxi was waiting at the door of the house to go to the airport! It was our last chance. I gave a couple of directions, and the magic happened. But we were very close to not having an ending. It was like a miracle at the last moment.

You get pretty inventive with how you use technology as a storytelling tool. Were there any ideas that didn’t make it in?
Of course. One of the things I had to cut that I really liked was, there’s this element when you talk on Skype or any video chat: you can’t look each other in the eye. There was this moment in the beginning where they’re trying to look at each other, but they can’t, because when you look at the screen, you’re no longer looking into the camera, and when you’re looking at the camera, you’re no longer looking at the person on the screen. It’s the impossibility of looking into each others’ eyes.

On this week’s extra-packed episode of the Way Too Indiecast, Bernard, CJ, and Dustin discuss the 2015 Cannes Film Festival lineup, which looks to break the mold and announce some new filmmakers into the fold as opposed to showcasing the same old faces. Then, inspired by the recent release of While We’re Young and the upcoming The Age of Adaline, the gang talk about the subject of aging in film and why we find it so endlessly fascinating. Also on the show, “Name 5” returns and the boys share their indie picks of the week. Enjoy, friends (while we’re young)!

Topics

• Indie Picks of the Week (2:12)
• Cannes 2015 Lineup (13:10)
• Name 5 (33:58)
• Aging in Film (39:04)

WTI Articles Referenced in the Podcast

2015 Cannes Lineup

While We’re Young review

Different Drum review

Kevin Chenault interview

Blue Jasmine review

Before Midnight review

112 Weddings review

Doug Block interview

Subscribe to the Way Too Indiecast

• Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes
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• and don’t forget to leave us a rating and quick review!

Remember last week when we said that It Follows was being planned for a slow build in theaters and a Video On-Demand release on 3/27? Well, when you open to the second highest per screen average of the year, plans can change. The unsettling horror film expanded to 32 screens this past weekend, and now according to Slashfilm, distributor Radius-TWC will quickly expand to around 1,000 theaters. The downside is that the VOD release has been postponed, perhaps until the film leaves the big chain theaters it now will be seen in. Truthfully, this is a good trade-off, as It Follows is best seen in a dark room, surrounded by strangers. Here’s what you may have missed from last week’s entertainment news:

SXSW 2015 Wraps, Krisha Wins Top Prize

After premieres of 100 films including first looks at hotly anticipated films Furious 7 and Trainwreck, this year’s SXSW Film Festival was bigger and better than ever. Trey Edward Shults’s family drama Krisha became the first film to win both the Narrative Feature and Audience Award at the the SXSW Film Festival since Natural Selection in 2011. Peace Officer took home the top prize for feature documentary. You can find the complete list of jury winners here. And don’t forget to check out our coverage directly from the fest.

Criterion Collection June Titles Headlined by André and Wallace

The landmark 1981 indie My Dinner with André (Criterion #479) is getting a Blu-ray upgrade, being packaged with already enshrined Vanya on 42nd Street (#599) and new release Jonathan Demme’s A Master Builder for a new boxset focused on the collaboration between theater director André Gregory and actor Wallace Shawn. Other films being released in the June 2015 haul are Bernhard Wicki’s antiwar film The Bridge, Gilliam-Bridges-Williams masterwork The Fisher King, Czech cult film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, and a standalone release of Jack Nicholson’s iconic performance in Five Easy Pieces (the film was original released as part of the BBS boxset).

Amirpour Follow-Up Casts Carrey, Keanu, Momoa

Ana Lily Amirpour’s debut A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night was a striking, original entry in vampire cinema, standing out as one of last year’s best indie films. For her follow-up, she’s turning to cannibalism, a horror subgenre that isn’t as popular but could use a fresh re-imagining. According to Deadline, The Bad Batch won’t be an uncovered gem with the recent casting of Jim Carrey, Keanu Reeves and Aquaman himself, Jason Momoa. The trio will join leads Diego Luna and Suki Waterhouse in this dystopian love story set in the heart of Texas. Production is set to begin in April.

Errol Morris Making True-Crime Series for Netflix

Fresh off the mind-blowing conclusion to HBO’s series The Jinx, documentary legend Errol Morris told the Business Insider that his upcoming project with Netflix “has an element of true crime in it.” It was impossible not to connect recent cultural dynamos Serial and The Jinx to The Thin Blue Line, the landmark in pulpy true crime docs, so it is exciting to the see the originator is back in the game. If you haven’t seen The Thin Blue Line, it is being released by the Criterion Collection tomorrow.

Mondo Takes on Malick

Mondo, the fine purveyors of awesome original posters, recently announced an upcoming series on the work of film master Terrence Malick. The first, for his debut Badlands, was released on Thursday and promptly sold out, as is usually the case for their work. If you want to get your hands on the limited prints for Days of Heaven or The Tree of Life, you’re going to have to act fast. The Badlands print was sold at $45 (275 quantity), with 125 variant editions being sold at $65. The beautiful work and exclusivity are definitely worth the price if you can manage to be one of the lucky few.

Trailer of the Week: Sunshine Superman

Base jumping is one of the most dangerous and awe-inspiring extreme sports. Marah Stauch’s profile of Carl Boenish, who is credited as the movement’s innovator, features incredible footage from his life and many daring escapades. Sunshine Superman premiered at the 2014 TIFF and will open in limited release on May 22. Check out the heart-pounding trailer below!

Broad Green Productions announced themselves as a new kid on the indie production block today with their partnership with suddenly prolific filmmaker Terrence Malick. The production and distribution company, formed in 2014, has acquired the U.S. rights to release Malick’s Knight of Cups, which is set to release later this year.

But that’s not all! Broad Green is also working with Malick for his next project, an untitled film that has cast Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara, Michael Fassbender, Natalie Portman and Cate Blanchett. No timetable has been set for this release.

Though new, Broad Green Productions has already made an imprint on the indie scene with their acquisitions of upcoming films like Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room, 99 Homes starring Michael Shannon and Andrew Garfield, and 2015 Sundance film A Walk in the Woods.

Shortly after the announcement that Knight of Cups would have its World Premiere in competition at the upcoming Berlin Film Festival, the latest project written and directed by Terrence Malick has followed up with a first-look trailer. Full of strangely framed shots from renowned cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (who last worked with Malick on The Tree of Life, make sure to watch our video essay on the Screen Poetry of Terrence Malick), several of them upside down, the Knights of Cup trailer gives brief glimpses at the infidelity and celebrity status that the film might ultimately be about.

Starring Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett and Natalie Portman, the well-known cast extends well beyond its three leads including names like Brian Dennehy, Antonio Banderas, Freida Pinto, Wes Bentley, Isabel Lucas, Teresa Palmer, Imogen Poots, Armin Mueller-Stahl, the voice of Ben Kingsley and others who may or may not survive the final edit. Knight of Cups’ official synopsis is about as cryptic as the trailer:

Once there was a young prince whose father, the king of the East, sent him down into Egypt to find a pearl. But when the prince arrived, the people poured him a cup. Drinking it, he forgot he was the son of a king, forgot about the pearl and fell into a deep sleep.

Rick’s (Christian Bale) father used to read this story to him as a boy.

The road to the East stretches out before him. Will he set forth?

The Knight of Cups trailer is available online through FilmNation, watch it below:

According to IMDb and as of this writing, Abraham Lincoln has been (or will be) portrayed in movies and on TV over 350 times, from 1911 (His First Commission) to 2015 (The Gettysburg Address), and by the likes of everyone from Henry Fonda (1939’s Young Mr. Lincoln) to Louis C.K. (during the 2012 season of Saturday Night Live). Joining these actors and others is a young man making his onscreen debut, Braydon Denney, in a 2014 film from a first-time director.

The Better Angels is the story of a very young Abraham Lincoln. The film takes place in Indiana the early 1800s, when Lincoln was about eight-years-old. The future president lives off the land with his strong-but-silent father, Tom (Jason Clarke); his doting mother, Nancy (Brit Marling); as well as a sister and a cousin. The times are lean, the work is hard, and the fun is sparing, but through it all young Abe gains wisdom that can only be amassed through life experiences. One of those experiences is the death of his mother, with whom he was very close. Another is the later introduction of his father’s new wife, Sarah (Diane Kruger), with whom he becomes just as close.

Because we live in the era of superhero movies, it’s only fitting for one of America’s greatest heroes to get a proper origin story. Abraham Lincoln gets one in The Better Angels and it’s superb. What makes it so great is how the story is told.

So many depictions of our 16th president – now matter how good – are loaded with facts, details, and recitations of historic speeches and quotes and conversations. All of this is fine, but it’s all been done. The Better Angels writer/director A.J. Edwards prefers showing Lincoln’s story as opposed to just telling it.

The story is visualized through a stark, at points bleak, black-and-white lens, making good times look bearable and bad times look desperate. But there’s also a beauty to it, a rich texture to the nature-heavy settings photographed by cinematographer Matthew J. Lloyd. The wood is old and strong and the fruitful earth is at times stubborn, but the water runs cold and the sun shines no less brightly than it does in color. It’s not exactly an Ansel Adams piece, but the efforts to be one are noticeable.

Edwards’ script is as bare as the winter fields of Indiana, with an efficiency of dialogue that is fitting for a family of five living in harsh conditions in the early 19th century. Children are seen, not heard, and anything worth talking about among the adults might get in the way of working the land. Even punishments are dealt – and received – in silence.

While told along a chronological timeline, the film is more a collection of moments in young Lincoln’s life than it is a story about those moments. This collection is the genius of the film.

Combined with the sparse dialogue and the stark black-and-white imagery, the moments collected in the film, shot loosely (sometimes too much so) with a handheld camera, are presented like clips from a home movie that had been edited together on one reel and found in an attic decades later. The subject is now a known quantity, but with this “home movie,” how those moments from the subject’s past then shaped the subject into today’s known quantity become brilliantly clear in hindsight. Through these moments in the film, the viewer will learn about Abe’s honesty, his stoicism, his intelligence, his work ethic, his first exposure to slavery, and the driving force behind his considerable compassion.

There are also moments when others recognize Abe is different. He’s smarter than the other kids (and many adults) and by a considerable distance. His mothers know it and both make efforts to get him a proper education. It’s when Abe is in school that his teacher, Mr. Crawford (Wes Bentley), notices the same. It takes Abe’s father longer to come around because that’s how men were in the early 19th century: learn a trade, not a lesson. Thankfully, both mothers won that fight.

The title The Better Angels has a dual meaning. One is a direct reference to the closing statements of Lincoln’s first inaugural address:

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

The other would be the better angels of Lincoln’s childhood: his two mothers. His bond with his birthmother is undeniable, and a devastating quote from his step-mother solidifies her meaning in his life:

“I’ll never take your mother’s place. But I’ll love you as she did. If you choose to love me less, I’ll still love you the same.”

A.J. Edwards has studied at the foot of director (and this film’s producer) Terrence Malick, and that influence shows in Edwards directorial style. This is not a bad thing, as even a mediocre film made by someone inspired by Malick is worth a look. Fortunately, this film is far above mediocre and somewhere closer to masterful.

Considering that Terrence Malick has never put out consecutive films less than five years apart, one time it was two decades, putting out a film only a year after Tree of Life is very uncharacteristic. Rumor has it that the prolific director is actually working on several films right at the moment. The sudden surge of urgency is unknown, but very welcoming. To the Wonder shares the same narrative style as Tree of Life by showing but never telling the story. Often situations are suggested or hinted at but never quite fully spelled out, forcing the viewer to read between the lines. To the Wonder is even more subtle and less cohesive than Tree of Life, so if you struggled with that on Tree of Life, this film will likely produce similar results.

At the beginning Neil (Ben Affleck) and Marina (Olga Kurylenko) wander the French coast madly in love with one another. They explore the beautiful cathedral at Mont St. Michel which they call the Wonder and clasp their hands together at what ends up being the pinnacle peak of their relationship. Shortly after that Neil must relocate back to the States and convinces Marina and her little daughter to move with him. The flat countryside landscape of Oklahoma is a stark contrast to the city life in Paris Marina is used to. Not only does Marina not fit in to her new surroundings but her relationship with Neil is unraveling with each passing moment.

The couple drifts away from each other for no specific reason other than they never quite seem to be on the same beat of the drum. Malick wonderfully symbolizes this in a shot when the couple are on different floors of their home walking into separate rooms. But they are not the only ones in a crucial crossroad in their lives. A local priest Father Quintana (Javier Bardem) preaches the word of God to others but seems to have little direction or happiness in his own life. What these characters have in common is that they are searching for something that is only felt and not seen. In Marina’s case it is love that she is searching for, while the priest is pursuing his faith.

To the Wonder borrows many of the aesthetics found in Tree of Life. The camera always seems to be moving along with the characters, rarely ever is it stationary. Many similar objects appear in both films such as; beautiful stained glass churches, plenty of nature shots of trees and water, and heavy focus on the emotional reactions of the lead actors. Also similar is that the dialog takes a back seat to the stunning visuals of Malick’s visual poetry that is set against a perfectly chosen score. Most of the dialog will cut out mid-way through a sentence, as if the words are not really worth hearing.

Like most of Malick’s films, To the Wonder will not be for everyone. In fact, it may not even be for most. What might frustrate some viewers is how elusive the film is. Being that it features detached characters that are all looking for some intangible item makes the film seem very distant. Malick mostly succeeds at the impossible task of capturing these intangibles such as being in love and being directionless, while rarely relying on words to describe what is happening.

Affleck barely has any lines in the film and none of them were all that important. His character is withdrawn and the fact he spends most of the time in the frame, but seldom in the foreground exemplifies that. I realize that the film purposely does not give much detail about Ben, but I cannot help but wonder if a little more time was spent getting to know him would have been more beneficial. Going with a lifelike approach to its characters and their circumstances yields split results. In its favor, the film captures human nature without dramatizing anything, but it is at the cost of not having much of an emotional punch.

To the Wonder is such an absorbing film that it is not easy to form an instant opinion about it because you must let the film sink in for a while. Essentially the film is a two hour visual masterpiece with a plot that could be summed in ten seconds. Yet, even with a rather simplistic overall story, the film explores complex areas such as the dynamics of relationships, love, and faith. To the Wonder is a visual marvel to look at but its ambiguous form makes it frustratingly impenetrable at times.

At the core, the cinema is the most powerful art form between sound and image. From his most direct, plot-driven narrative, Badlands, to his most abstract, polarizing film The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick has been progressively moving toward the highest form of pure cinema poetry. To explain: While many hail Badlands as his penultimate masterpiece–namely for its ingenious reshaping of a story of vagabond serial killers to a lyrical ode of unabashed human impulse–it ironically is as far removed as anything that Malick originally intended to be his masterwork. In fact, I don’t think we’ve seen his masterwork yet. The New World and The Tree of Life are both towering masterpieces. Both exercising improvisational scripting, the physicality of open body language acting, and the absence of generators or any manufactured “studio” lights. But they are merely precursors to a much grander cinematic opera of the soul that Malick is slowly chipping away at with his current cavalcade of prolific motion pictures. And that’s exactly the best way to describe the cinema of Malick: “motion pictures.” If anything, Malick has come closer than any filmmaker to breaking down and building up the very foundation of the cinema. In turn, he has shown us at our most feral, our most vulnerable and our most majestic. Malick’s moving image is the penultimate cinematic experience. Let it wash over you.

The Screen Poetry of Terrence Malick

To The Wonder is Terrence Malick’s uncharacteristically quick follow-up to his 2011 stroke of genius work of The Tree of Life. There were a lot of similarities in each of their trailers; both have excellent orchestra music accompanying characters that spend a lot of the time running through fields as if they are trying to escape from something. Malick appears to have made yet another visual masterpiece, one that could be a companion piece to his previous film.

Ben Affleck will likely be doing his more serious work of his acting career with his lead role as Neil. He and his girlfriend live happily together in Oklahoma until her visa expires, forcing her to return back to Paris. Making the situation complicated is when Neil’s childhood sweetheart (Rachel McAdams) re-enters his life.

Watch the official trailer for To The Wonder:

Venice Film Festival announced the 2012 lineup this morning which will feature a premiere of Terrence Malick’s To The Wonder starring; Ben Affleck, Javier Bardem, Rachel Weisz, and Rachel McAdams. Malick is one of the 17 directors that will be competing for the Golden Lion trophy at this year’s Venice Film Festival. One of the other directors that will be representing the United States is Harmony Korine with his film Spring Breakers featuring James Franco, Vanessa Hudgens, and Selena Gomez.

The biggest surprise was the absence of Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master. According to many rumors the film was going to premiere at Venice and when it was left off the TIFF announcement two days ago that only made it more likely to appear here. Variety even made the mistake of initially reporting The Master making the lineup.

The 69th annual Venice Film Festival will run from August 29th through September 8th.

See the full Venice Film Festival lineup below:

Opening Film (Out Of Competition)
The Reluctant Fundamentalist – Mira Nair (U.S.,Qatar)

Competition
To The Wonder – Terrence Malick (U.S.)
Something in the Air – Olivier Assayas (France)
Outrage: Beyond – Takeshi Kitano (Japan)
Fill The Void – Rama Bursztyn and Yigal Bursztyn (Israel)
Pieta – Kim Ki-duk (South Korea)
Dormant Beauty – Marco Bellocchio (Italy)
E’ stato il figlio – Daniele Cipri (Italy)
At Any Price – Ramin Bahrani (US, UK)
La Cinquieme Saison – Peter Brosens, Jessica Woodworth (Belgium, Netherlands, France)
Un Giorno Speciale – Francesca Comencini (Italy)
Passion – Brian De Palma (France, Germany)
Superstar – Xavier Giannoli (France, Belgium)
Spring Breakers – Harmony Korine (US)
Thy Womb – Brillante Mendoza (Philippines)
Linhas de Wellington – Valeria Sarmiento (Portugal, France)
Paradise: Faith – Ulrich Seidl (Austria, France, Germany)
Betrayal – Kirill Serebrennikov (Russia)

Out Of Competition
L’homme qui rit – Jean-Pierre Ameris (France-Czech Republic)
Love Is All You Need – Susanne Bier (Denmark-Sweden)
Cherchez Hortense – Pascal Bonitzer (France)
Sur un fil – Simon Brook (France-Italy)
Enzo Avitabile Music Life – Jonathan Demme (Italy-US)
Tai Chi 0 – Stephen Fung (China)
Lullaby To My Father – Amos Gitai (Israel-France-Switzerland)
Penance (Shokuzai) – Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Japan)
Bad 25 – Spike Lee (US)
O Gebo e a Sombra – Manoel de Oliveira (Portugal-France)
The Company You Keep – Robert Redford (US)
Shark (Bait 3D) – Kimble Rendall (Australia-Singapore-China)
Disconnect – Henry-Alex Rubin (US)
The Iceman – Ariel Vromen (US)

Out Of Competition: Special Events
Anton’s Right Here – Lyubov Arkus (Russia)
It Was Better Tomorrow – Hinde Boujemaa (Tunisia)
Clarisse – Liliana Cavani (Italy)
Sfiorando il muro – Silvia Giralucci and Luca Ricciardi (Italy)
Carmel – Amos Gitai (Israel-France-Italy)
El impenetrable – Daniele Incalcaterra and Fausta Quattrini (Argentina-France)
Witness: Libya – Michael Mann (US)
Medici con l’Africa – Carlo Mazzacurati (Italy)
La nave dolce – Daniele Vicari (Italy-Albania)

Orrizonti
Wadjda – Haifaa Al Mansour (Saudi Arabia-Germany)
The Paternal House – Kianoosh Ayari (Iran)
I Also Want It -, Alexey Balabanov (Russia)
Gli Equilibristi – Ivano De Matteo (Italy-France)
L’intervallo – Leonardo Di Costanzo (Italy-Switzerland-Germany)
Winter of Discontent – Ibrahim El Batout (Egypt)
Tango Libre – Frederic Fonteyne (Belgium-France-Luxembourg)
The Cutoff Man – Idan Hubel (Israel)
Fly With The Crane – Li Ruijun (China)
A Hijacking – Tobias Lindholm (Denmark)
Leones – Jazmin Lopez (Argentina-France-Netherlands)
Bellas Mariposas – Salvatore Mereu (Italy)
Low Tide – Roberto Minervini (US-Italy-Belgium)
Boxing Day – Bernard Rose (UK-US)
Yema – Djamila Sahraoui (Algeria-France)
Araf – Somewhere In Between – Yesim Ustaoglu (Turkey-France-Germany)
The Millennial Rapture – Koji Wakamatsu (Japan)
Three Sisters – Wang Bing (France-Hong Kong-China)

The nominations for the 2012 Oscars were announced this morning with Hugo leading the pack for the 84nd Academy Awards with 11 nominations. The Artist came in as a close second with 10 nominations including; Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Score. This is the first year with the new Best Picture rule, no longer is there a set number of Best Picture nominations, instead a film needs to get 5% of votes get a nomination. The new rule is a great change. This year still ended up with 9 films, a few more than I expected.

Perhaps the biggest surprises were The Tree Of Life getting nominations for Best Picture and Best Director, which I am glad that film is getting some love from the Academy. Other shocker is Michael Fassbender not getting a nomination for Best Actor for his role in Shame, shame on you Academy. Tilda Swinton comes up empty for Best Actress for We Need To Talk About Kevin. But some good news, Gary Oldman received his very first Oscar nomination which makes a lot of people happy.

Full List of 2012 Oscar Nominations:

The Artist
The Descendants
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
The Help
Hugo
Midnight In Paris
Moneyball
The Tree Of Life
War Horse

Michel Hazanavicius – The Artist
Alexander Payne – The Descendants
Martin Scorsese – Hugo
Woody Allen – Midnight In Paris
Terrence Malick – The Tree Of Life

Demian Bichir – A Better Life
Jean Dujardin – The Artist
George Clooney – The Descendants
Brad Pitt – Moneyball
Gary Oldman – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Glenn Close – Albert Nobbs
Viola Davis – The Help
Rooney Mara – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Meryl Streep – The Iron Lady
Michelle Williams – My Week With Marilyn

Kenneth Branagh – My Week With Marilyn
Jonah Hill – Moneyball
Nick Nolte – Warrior
Christopher Plummer – Beginners
Max Von Sydow – Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Berenice Bejo – The Artist
Jessica Chastain – The Help
Melissa McCarthy – Bridesmaids
Janet McTeer – Albert Nobbs
Octavia Spencer – The Help

Michel Hazanavicius – The Artist
Kristin Wiig & Annie Mumulo – Bridesmaids
J.C. Chandor – Margin Call
Woody Allen – Midnight In Paris
Asghar Farhadi – A Separation

Jim Rash, Nat Faxon, Alexander Payne – The Descendants
John Logan – Hugo
George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Beau Willimon – The Ides Of March
Steve Zaillian & Aaron Sorkin – Moneyball
Peter Straughan & Bridget O’Connor – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

A Separation
Bullhead
Footnote
In Darkness
Monsieur Lazhar

A Cat In Paris
Chico & Rita
Kung Fu Panda 2
Puss In Boots
Rango

Hell And Back Again
If A Tree Falls; A Story Of The Earth Liberation Front
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
Pina
Undefeated

Guillaume Shiffman – The Artist
Jeff Cronenweth – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Robert Richardson – Hugo
Emmanuel Lubezki – The Tree Of Life
Janusz Kaminski – War Horse

Anne-Sophie Bion & Michel Hazavanicius – The Artist
Kevin Tent – The Descendants
Kirk Baxter & Angus Wall – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Thelma Schoonmaker – Hugo
Christopher Tellefsen – Moneyball

The Artist
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 2
Hugo
Midnight In Paris
War Horse

Anonymous
The Artist
Hugo
Jane Eyre
W.E.

Albert Nobbs
Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Pt. 2
The Iron Lady

Ludovic Bource – The Artist
Alberto Iglesias – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Howard Shore – Hugo
John Williams – The Adventures Of Tintin
John Williams – War Horse

“Man Or Muppet” – The Muppets
“Real In Rio” – Rio

Drive
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Hugo
Transformers: The Dark Of The Moon
War Horse

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Hugo
Moneyball
Transformers: The Dark of The Moon
War Horse

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Pt. 2
Hugo
Real Steel
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Transformers: The Dark of the Moon

The Barber Of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement
God Is The Bigger Elvis
Incident In New Baghdad
Saving Face
The Tsunami & The Cherry Blossom

Dimanche
The Fantastic Flying Books Of Mr. Morris Lessmore
La Luna
A Morning Stroll
Wild Life

Pentecost
Raju
The Shore
Time Freak
Tuba Atlantic

From the acclaimed director Terrence Malick comes The Tree of Life, an artistic and profound film about the meaning of life centering on a normal and rather insignificant family of the Midwest. The film forgoes traditional narrative in favor of a visual opus that even Stanley Kubrick would appreciate. The best thing you could do is go into the film expecting a cinematic experience; it rids itself of any conventional qualities.

The Tree of Life starts off by tells us that there are two different ways through life either nature or grace and we must choose which one to follow. Grace does not try to please itself and accepts being forgotten, disliked, insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself, like to have it’s own way and finds reasons to be unhappy. Clearly that symbolizes the differences between how the mother and father end up raising their children.

The film then briefly shows a glimpse of Mr. O’Brien (Brad Pitt) and Mrs. O’Brien (Jessica Chastain) who lost one of their children. We hear from the father, mother and brother how they regretted things they did or did not do while the son was alive. A quick introduction is given to the present day Jack O’Brien (Sean Penn) who is an adult but is remembering his deceased brother from childhood.

To say the film is visually stunning is a gross understatement and it does not take long for the film to show it. The film shifts not just back to the beginning of the story but the beginning of time. Beautiful shots depicting how the universe expanded and life as we would know it began.

Fast forward millions of years and Jack O’Brien is born. It slowly shows different stages of him growing up, mostly consisting of his upbringing in the house with his family. A short while later another son is born into the world and shows Jack curious of him. The children grow up together living normal lives under the somewhat strict guidance of their disciplinary father. In one immensely emotional scene, the father breaks down a bit and admits his regret of pushing his kids too hard.

One of the things I enjoyed most about the film is how Malick shows us the smallest of detail and we can instantly relate to it. Such as the way the sunlight is reflected onto a wall, the way your hand moves through the air when you put it out of a moving vehicle, or the way the wind blows through clothes hanging from the clothesline in the summer. The way he evokes emotion through visuals instead of words is amazing.

There is definitely more style over substance overall in the film which is why a lot of people have a problem with the film, it can be a bit of a challenge to watch. I would say it was more of an experience than it is a traditional film. People hated 2001 Space Odyssey when it came out because of the long absence of dialog during the opening 25 minutes. If you dig deep though the film does touch on some philosophical questions such as the age-old nature vs nurture debate.

The cinematography and use of the camera was done masterfully from the very beginning and carried throughout. It might be the most technical and beautiful American shot film since 2001 Space Odyssey. The film would certainly have my Oscar vote for cinematography but time will tell if it actually will or not. It did, however, win the Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival this year.

It is a rare that a film so poetically written and masterfully filmed comes along. Watching what Malick perceives what life and death looks like is stunning. The Tree of Life may be hard for most people to watch because of it’s non-linear narrative and art like visuals but that is really quite a shame because I think it would take multiple views in order to fully appreciate. Although, to fully understand the film may be difficult to do because of how subjective the film is, which is a subject that the film itself brings up.

Cannes Film Festival came to a close Sunday night and announced the winners of Palme d’Or, Grand Prix, Best Director and other high status awards. Kirsten Dunst won Best Actress in Lars von Trier’s film Melancholia and thanked the director after a very controversial comment he made about Nazi’s during a press conference that caused a lot of media attention last week. The top prize, Palme d’Or, went out to The Tree of Life directed by Terrence Malick which stars Brad Pitt and Sean Penn.

See the full list of nominations.

The Tree of Life, (director Terrence Malick)

The Kid with a Bike, (directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, (director Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

Nicolas Winding Refn, Drive

Joseph Cedar, Hearat Shulayim

Las Acacias, (director Pablo Gorgelli)

Polisse, (director Maiwenn)

Kirsten Dunst, Melancholia

Jean Dujarin, The Artist

Cross Country, (director Marina Viroda)

Arirang, (director Kim Ki-Duk)
Stopped on Track, (director Andreas Dresen)

Elena, (director Andrey Zvyaginstev)