Review of Knight of Cups (2015) by Jason V — 14 Nov 2016

This movie pursues the notion that human beings are "angelic' creatures who fall to earth into the cycle of birth and death. Light is our birth right even as some curiosity or ambition to carry that light propelled us into the shadowy dream world of material existence.

As children we are close to that light, as we grow worldly events pull us further and further from our task of remaining light bodies that illuminate or at least remain connect to our light nature. We seem to forget why we are here, we build and invent but in the world Terence Mallick reflects back to us, so much of our creation has to do with journey and transportation, architecture that longs for some other better world or seeks to protect and distract us from that purpose we know we have but keep forgetting to remember.

Deeper and deeper we go into our mistakes interspersed with hints and signposts along the was. These people may be inspiring us or maybe we just project onto them the "reminders" they give us of the better world from which we came.

So we long for that faraway self , born of a better world even as we search for the portal that takes us home, that light at the end of a tunnel, shown in the movie for a split second. Lost as ever and overwhelmed by his mistake and his humanity, Rick goes to a priest who tells him that it is normal to this that the suffering in our lives may be God's punishment.

But maybe it is actually proof of God's Love. By allowing us to feel suffering and keeping us there, we go beyond our minds beyond this world and are able to see what else lay beyond. Finally Rick experiences freedom or maybe it is better to say that Rick lets freedom happen.

He has a sense of purpose and that purpose is to move toward his true nature , toward the light. to be nurtured by light whoever he can find it in nature and by accident. The more he starts to remember himself the more traces and existence of light become apparent to him.

Now when he looks at a sky line. The clouds and the play of light on the buildings become the foreground and the buildings still majestic in their own way becomes the background. This is the creator's/Malick way of saying that growing spiritual awareness and even enlightenment exists along side and permeated in material manifestation, it is our challenge and our hope to focus on the light that permeated all material existence.

Once we identify it we can identify with it and hold that focus above everything else. No matter what seems to be happening always remember the light is our birthright and our true identity.