Pretentious.

I didn't so much watch Knight of Cups as have it on in the background while I was doing random shit. Even with my lack of attention I wasn't lost that much about the plot. I don't know enough about Pilgrim's Progress to remark on the similarities, I just found the film to really highlight the pretentiousness of LA celebrities.

Each chapter encapsulates Bale's involvement with various women, passing through a disagreement with his estranged brother and the disconnection from his addled father. There were references to Twin Peaks (which I completely missed - apparently it's a song that samples Major Briggs's retelling of his dream about Bobby, which is actually one of my least favourite scenes in the show) and tarot cards, stuff I find interesting, and Dan Harmon has a tiny cameo, Erin wasn't as evident. I don't think I could appreciate stream of consciousness as a device in film. It doesn't capture me in book form, either.

There was too much of a detachment from Bale and his lovers, one of them just some girl who drags him down what I thought was Venice Beach, in a scene that was way too reminiscent of LA Story, where Sarah Jessica Parker convinces Steve Martin to go get a colonic. Dumbly enough, I think that movie did a better job taking the piss out of pretentiousness in LA. I've seen it a few times, though I can't remember if it was genuinely good. (I had a problem when I watched the same videos I also had a habit of watching some of the trailers instead of fast-forwarding them, so I wound up knowing them better than the movies themselves - LA Story was one of them).

This is the only Terrence Malick film I've seen, I saw the trailer for Song to Song, thinking by the plot it was interesting. But the floating camera work and disjointed dialogue is distracting. I get a sense he constructs a scene then just casually films it from multiple weird angles, which looks really creative until you think it might make you nauseated, like being on a ship at sea. Some of those scenes happen to be lavish parties hosted by one celebrity (whether you're meant to believe Antonio Banderas has K-parties or this is just a lot of people pretending to be high, I'm not sure), or raves or rock concerts. I was more fascinated by the dancers suspended from the ceiling in the rave scene, one being stuck in what looked like a kind of windsock that could be stretched to cover her legs like a mermaid's tail then used to suspend the dancer from an enormously high ceiling. I wanted to stop the movie and ask her how the fuck she was doing that. Can we make a movie about her, please? She's riveting.

I appreciate directors who try to show dreamscapes and how we would see images in our minds, much like Gondry's Eternal Sunshine, the creativity involved in the visual representation of something as fractured and abstract as memory itself is so effective at points. While Hal Hartley might basically choreograph a scene and be deliberate with his framing, Malick refuses to be so regimented. He allows the actors to frolic or pace rather than remain still, but there's no sense of them being directed as such. Bale's character falls to the whims of excess and debauchery, losing focus on finding the pearl of meaning, and as you follow him, you would be forgiven for losing focus too, which seems to be intentional. But the broken narrative of disparate voices don't really succeed in engaging you fully. I wasn't drawn in or captivated or moved; or even satisfied with the conclusion. It felt pretentious for pretentiousness's sake. Genuine art for art's sake.