NOSCRIPT? NOPROBLEM.
‘ Knight of Cups’ star Christian Bale on working with director Terrence Malick
As is often the case with Terrence Malick’s films, Christian Bale says “Knight of Cups” ( opening Friday) will affect “every person who watches it in very different ways. … I’d be willing to bet if you spoke to people coming out of the theater, you’d get a different interpretation of what they had just seen from each one of them.”
Actually working with Malick “isn’t going to be for everybody either,” the Oscar winner noted. “It’s got to be for actors who enjoy the process, as opposed to those who simply want to play a character in a piece. Often, Terry won’t even have a camera on you, when in other films that might be the pivotal moment of your character. That’s simply how he works and how he shot this film.”
With “Knight of Cups” ( the title refers to a specific Tarot card), Bale teams up with Malick for a second time, having first starred as John Rolfe in the filmmaker’s “The New World” a decade earlier.
“Of course, this was a very different film,” said Bale. “We had kept in touch since ‘ The NewWorld’ and talked about different projects. Then he came to me for this and asked, ‘ What do you feel about doing a film where we just say, ‘ Forget the script.’ There will be no script at all. I’mgoing to give you a character description, then we’ll go film and see what happens.’ ”
Bale made it clear that there are very few other directors he would trust with such an ambitious project— a feeling obviously shared by his co- stars in “Knight of Cups,” including Natalie Portman, Cate Blanchett, Teresa Palmer, Antonio Banderas, Brian Dennehy andWes Bentley.
For Bale, shooting this film— in which he plays a successful Hollywood screenwriter trying to figure out his life—“it was akin to more of a piece of music or a piece of literature than a film.”
For him that was a compliment to Malick, because “in my life, music and literature have had far more of an effect on me than film ever has.
“I love making films, but for me as an actor I don’t think you have to watch films to be in films. You have to watch films to be aware of the history of films if you’re a director. For an actor you just have to be there and do the work. But as for inspiration, music and literature have just resonated more. That’s what I said to Terry when I finally saw the finished film.”
As for Bale’s character of Rick, he described him as “a man of words, but a person who has lost his means of expression. He’s somebody who has had a dream, and a fellow who has a wonderful ability with words, but who has lost all use or love of them. He’s had all the beauties and indulgences and vices of Los Angeles thrown at him. He’s enjoyed every single one of them. But now he’s reached this sort of mountaintop in his life. He’s looking over the peak, but now he’s trying to figure out why this does not feel the way he thought it always would.”
Bale said he personally could relate somewhat to what his character was going through. “There’s a lot to hate about L. A. and an awful lot to love about it. I hated it when I first came out here, but for the first few years it was the only place I was getting any work, so I kept coming back. But as soon as I’d be done with the work, I’d head back to London — a walking city— where I’d feel more comfortable. Gradually, I developed deep roots here, because my children were born here in L. A., and my wife grew up here and all that. I also gradually realized the beauty of the city and started to love it.”