Knight of cups
Natalie Portman and Christian Bale on magic Malick.
It feels like guerrilla filmmaking,” says Christian Bale, explaining just what it’s like to make a movie with the celebrated writer-director Terrence Malick. “There’s also a sense of spontaneity to them, which unfortunately gets lost, usually, the bigger the film.” Sitting in a conference room in Berlin’s Four Seasons, dressed in green cargo pants and a long-sleeved black shirt, Bale is more than experienced to make the comparison. Blockbusters like the Dark Knight trilogy nestle comfortably next to smaller films on his CV, such as Malick’s new movie, Knight Of Cups.
Shot in 2012, it’s been a long time coming. In the time it’s taken Malick to shape what Bale calls a “huge amount of footage” in the cutting room,
the Welsh-born Oscar-winner has seen American
Hustle, Exodus: Gods And Kings and The Big Short all released. Likewise, Bale’s Cups co-star Natalie Portman has been in Thor: The Dark World, this month’s troubled western Jane Got A Gun and made her directorial debut, adapting Amos Oz’s A Tale Of Love And Darkness.
Not that Total Film is about to accuse the mysterious Malick of slacking. Since the pressshy director made his comeback – after a 20-year hiatus – with The Thin Red Line (1998), he’s been positively prolific. Pocahontas tale The New
World (2005), starring Bale, was followed by the extraordinary Cannes-winning The Tree Of Life (2011) and lo-fi romance To The Wonder (2012).
Cups, meanwhile, was shot back-to-back with
Malick’s next film, Weightless, set around the Austin music scene, with Bale and Portman credited alongside their Cups co-star Cate Blanchett.
Similarly, Cups delves into the entertainment industry – albeit this time in Los Angeles. Bale’s character Rick, a Hollywood screenwriter, is a lost soul set adrift in a world of lavish pool parties, lurid strip joints and beautiful Pacific beaches. Co-starring a host of recognisable faces – Antonio Banderas, Jason Clarke, Wes Bentley, Imogen Poots – the emotional core comes from his relationships with Blanchett, as his ex-wife Nancy, and Portman, as Elizabeth, a married woman he has a fling with.
Like To The Wonder, Cups has a semiautobiographical feel – not least with reference to Rick having a brother that died – and you suspect Malick is grappling with his own past. “I think every part of the process, it seems, for him, is a search,” says Portman, who arrives for our chat in a long black dress, beige kitten heels and a pink Dior frock-coat. So no chance, then, of Malick taking on one of those blockbusters – a new Batman, perhaps? “That would be a very funny film,” grins Bale, “wouldn’t it?”
How did you first meet Terrence Malick?
CHRISTIAN BALE: We met in 2003. I was asked to go along and just read some of the stuff from The
New World, just for him to listen to it, but then he ended up putting me in that.
NATA LIE PORT MAN: I’d been lucky enough to meet him 10 years ago. I told him how much I absolutely admired his work and we kept in touch over the years… He’d send me a book or I would call him up and ask him about something. He got me reading George Eliot. I read Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda thanks to him, which was amazing. She became one of my favourite authors.
CB: He’s wonderful company. He’s a great conversationalist.
What were your impressions of the script?
CB: There was no script whatsoever – nothing! I would talk with Terry about what the character was, where he came from, what he did for a living, about his brothers, his parents, about how successful he’d become, and that was it – I didn’t have anything else beyond that. So I’d arrive each day, and he’d come and sit me at a table, and a few [ people] would have pages; I’d be trying to have a look at them to see because they would know a little bit more! He called it ‘torpedoing’. So he would get them to throw things at me, and just see how Rick responded to that… I’d turn up every day and have no idea what was going to be thrown my way.
NP: We were only given [ pages] for our character so the rest is really a mystery. Even if you’re in a scene with another character, you don’t know. But there was a lot to work with. Terrence writes like… you’ll get 10 pages of possible lines that you could say, that might be what your thoughts are, what your lines are, and then you choose what feels right out of that. And sometimes he’ll yell something out in the middle of a scene for you to say, or tell you right before a take to try this line.
So, Natalie, what did you know about Christian’s character, Rick?
NP: Not much! I knew about our relationship. I had talked with Terry before about how it’s an affair for me but it feels more real, like real love, than my own relationship, my own marriage, in the movie. Then I would have lines like: “You never say anything!” So I had the feeling he was going to be a quiet character, but that was the extent of what I knew – only because of what I was given about Elizabeth.
Were Malick’s methods hard to adjust to?
CB: I would notice it more in people who were arriving for a few days. I would see total confusion on their faces to start with! “What? It doesn’t matter what I do? I can do anything I want! Can I leave? What does that mean?” And then understanding, and then looking at me and going, “You didn’t say any of the lines that you were meant to say!” And I’d say, “Yeah, I didn’t feel like it!” They’d go, “What is going on here!?” And then really enjoying it, and very quickly realising that Terry is not that sort of dictator director who’s saying, “What did you do?” Everything is just, “Hey, it is what it is. There are no mistakes. You do what you feel is right.” And, sure, you might have given those pages to those
players but he made no demands that they absolutely say every line. He just always wanted to make sure that whatever they said came very naturally to them. When you have that, once you get used to it… Like anything, you arrive and you’re a stranger and trying to feel your way through it. But once you get used to it, with Terry he makes you feel very comfortable, then you understand it and it feels very freeing.
NP: He has a shooting style that’s exploratory. He’s looking to discover things all the time and it’s a really beautiful way to work – to take into all kinds of different movies. We tend to get into a rhythm where you feel like you’re just executing the script, where you’re putting the script onto the screen, and to go every day and say, “What can we find? What can we discover? What can we invent?” is really a beautiful thing. Although there is some planning. It’s not like you just
‘Rick’s at this spiritual crisis. He’s
achieved all of his dreams and desires but he feels like something
is very wrong’
Christian Bale
show up. There was months before of reading, watching movies and talking to Terry about the character. So you have a strong base.
What about the scene where you jump off the pier? Was that invented on the day?
CB: Terry was very worried. He really didn’t want me to do that – he didn’t know how deep it was and I didn’t either! But I saw a paddle-boarder, and went, “Deep enough?” He went, “Not really!” I went, “Well…” And I did it. I don’t know… It was just the mood I was in on that day. Terry’s a very nurturing guy, and he never wants anyone to be hurt. So I did it and he couldn’t stop me because he was too far back. But, yeah, I was just in a slightly self-destructive mood that day. What preparation did you do? Did he send you anything? CB: We looked at a few things, like [ John Bunyan’s]
Pilgrim’s Progress, and we talked about some other things… Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer, a little bit of The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen, who is in the film. And then some other things which we picked from. So, yeah, there were multiple things.
NP: We spent a lot of time with Peter Matthiessen, which was incredible, and that was one of the books that Terry had told me to read – The Snow
Leopard – so of course I was googly-eyed with him! That was a truly life-changing experience to spend time with him. Obviously it’s in the film but we had a few days at the Japanese Gardens, where he was explaining Zen to us. Unbelievable! You could tell he and Terry would be friends, because they both had that vast, endless human spirit. So when you see that become a few flashes in the movie, you think ‘What a shame’ because you know the depth of spirituality that we
experienced with him. I think it comes across in those impressions, though.
Talking of this, how did you relate to the spiritual message of the film?
NP: Well, I don’t necessarily think it’s one spiritual message. I think Terry leaves a lot of room open for interpretation. I think it’s very much the modern human’s problem: to be looking for purpose but being lost about what the purpose is, what it is that we’re seeking and what the goal is. We have these external pressures that you’re supposed to go for wealth, fame or acceptance by other people, or whatever these things are, and obviously it rings hollow when it’s attained. And then there’s this journey. You see characters like the Cate Blanchett character, [ a doctor] who is giving herself to other people who are the outcasts of society, and obviously there’s a glimpse of how life could be more meaningful and how it could have more fullness. Like I said, Terry’s humanity is vast and I think you feel it in every one of his films. You leave the films going into the world with more awe and more love for people. I think it’s a very positive thing.
CB: [ With my character] he’s at this point where he’s at this spiritual crisis, where he’s recognising that he’s achieved all of his dreams and desires; he’s achieved this peak of his profession. He’s invited to all of the exclusive parties that people try to get into, and he’s a permanent fixture at these things, but feeling like something is very wrong, something’s missing, and something needs to change – this can’t be the end.
What do you think of the film’s portrait of Los Angeles?
CB: I kind of love the LA it depicts. To me, it has such different facets. It’s a horror story. There’s ugliness. There’s real beauty. There’s real substance. But overall there’s incredible potential, and it’s all your choice of where you go, and just finding that success often actually takes you to the ugliest places. They can seem like the most grand but they can often be the ugliest. To me, that’s the same as every other city I’ve ever been to or lived in, and every other business I know people are involved in. Hollywood is just a little bit more… Everyone gesticulates a little bit bigger. It’s maybe a little bit more colourful.
What about Rick’s attitude to women? Does it show women as victims?
CB: I think certainly in my character, there is a guilt – has he cast a shadow over these women in his past? Was he a good man to them? Was he not a good man? Especially Cate Blanchett’s character, the ex-wife, and then we’ve got Natalie’s character, who he had an affair with and she was a married woman. He’s trying to work out – what did he do to these women? That seems to be something essential that he feels he needs to do before he could continue. So, yeah, there’s a great deal where he feels he’s used women entirely for pleasure and sometimes ignored who they are and their substance, and he’s trying to revisit that. And indeed that’s exactly what he’s doing with himself, and almost everybody around him – the whole of the scene
that he lives in. The novelty no longer excites him and the substance has gone. He needs to discover something new.
NP: I think it’s very hard to make any assumptions across gender. The most basic fact of humanity is that every human being is different and there are no rules, essentially. What might be true for this story… I don’t know if you can generalise into life. How did you feel when you saw the finished film?
CB: I felt like I do when I listen to a beautiful piece of music that means something to me. I felt like I do when I read a book. I felt like it wasn’t a storyteller imposing something on me. I felt like I was interactive with it and able to put my own meaning onto it, and that being the intention. And therefore depending on what mood I’m in, it can mean different things to me. I found that and the rhythm of it to be something that came through in a very personal manner to me. That’s what I told Terry afterwards. I said it feels more like music or literature to me than a film.
Natalie, after Knight Of Cups, you went on to direct your first feature, A Tale Of
Love And Darkness. Did working with Malick feed into this?
NP: Oh, a hundred per cent. I feel extraordinarily lucky to have worked with him right before directing. He reminds you that there are no rules and that every day should be an exploration and a discovery, flowing with mistakes and welcoming and looking for the weird things that happen. When you’re shooting a regular movie, if a civilian walks into your shot, you yell, “Cut!” and “Get out my shot” And you go, “Ugh, we have to do it again!” [ With] Terry, you go up to the person, you start a conversation with them, you hang out with them, you try and incorporate them into the scene, and then afterwards, they will try and get a release [ form signed] so the person is in the movie! It’s just a different attitude. And the freedom that he has, by having this small unit – it’s like a 10-person unit at most. The actors change clothes in the car. It stops, they close the back door, they put curtains on the windows, and we’re changing and we get out and shoot. It feels like a student film, and there’s a great freedom and you get so many interesting things that way. It’s why they capture these moments that are really transcendent.
Christian, do you ever feel like directing?
CB: I don’t think it’s for me. I don’t know why exactly. But I don’t really have that urge. You’ve both shot a third film – Weightless – with Malick, right?
CB: I was there for just two days. It almost certainly means I’m not going to be in it. Two days in a Terry film means you’re not going to be in it! NP: I worked for four and a half days on Knight Of Cups out of a two or three-month shoot. So I was like, “There’s a good chance I’m not going to end up in the movie!” But the beauty is the process is so incredible, that’s not what it’s about. I also trust Terry. If you’re not in, you probably deserve to not be in. What ends up on screen is so refined.
Knight Of Cups opens on 6 May.
‘ Terry’s looking to discover things all the time. It’s a really beautiful way to work’ Natalie Portman