Knight of Cups is a 2015 American drama film[4] written and directed by Terrence Malick and produced by Nicolas Gonda, Sarah Green and Ken Kao.

[5][6] The film is loosely inspired by, and at times quotes directly from, the 1678 Christian allegory The Pilgrim's Progress, the Acts of Thomas passage "Hymn of the Pearl",[7] and Suhrawardi's A Tale of the Western Exile.

It was released in the United States on March 4, 2016, by Broad Green Pictures[9] to more mixed reviews from critics and audiences alike.

Women provide a distraction from the daily pain he endures, and every encounter brings him closer to finding his place in the world.

Knight of Cups directly quotes a variety of dream vision works, including John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Mark Frost and David Lynch's Twin Peaks, and the Hymn of the Pearl from the Acts of Thomas.

The film freely oscillates between depicting Rick's memory, dreams, and "real" experiences, becoming a stream-of-consciousness series of moments and thoughts.

Pivotal scenes include the glittery high-rise party the film begins with, at a mansion full of Hollywood elites (where a patron urges Rick to attend a ketamine party, another patron wears a virtual reality headset, and two children play Wii Sports), and Rick's kaleidoscopic journey to Las Vegas with Karen.

[23] During production, Malick used a process he calls "torpedoing", where a character is thrown into a scene without the other actors' advance knowledge, forcing them to improvise.

[24][25] In addition to a traditional studio, the cast also recorded their voice-over work in nontraditional places, such as in a van or by the side of the road.

The site's consensus reads, "Knight of Cups finds Terrence Malick delving deeper into the painterly visual milieu he's explored in recent efforts, but even hardcore fans may struggle with the diminishing narrative returns.

[10] Justin Chang of Variety called the film "flawed but fascinating" and a "feverish plunge into the toxic cloud of decadence" as Malick offers a "corrosive critique of Hollywood hedonism".

[33] Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter said that the "resolutely poetic and impressionist" film "conveys most bracingly [the] fleeting nature of human exchange", but the end result "is a certain tedium and repetitiveness along with the rhythmic niceties and imaginative riffs... this one mostly operates on a more dramatically mundane, private and even narcissistic level [than The Tree of Life]".

"[35] Stephanie Zacharek of TIME wrote that the director "understands so little about women" and argued, "For loyal Malick fans, the woozy dream-logic visuals here may be enough.

"[38] In another highly positive review, Richard Brody of The New Yorker called the film "an instant classic in several genres—the confessional, the inside-Hollywood story, the Dantesque midlife-crisis drama, the religious quest, the romantic struggle, the sexual reverie, the family melodrama" and considered it "one of the great recent bursts of cinematic artistry, a carnival of images and sounds that have a sensual beauty, of light and movement, of gesture and inflection, rarely matched in any movie that isn’t Malick’s own.