The film opens with a Marek-like picture looking down on the earth from space with satellites orbiting the aurora, accompanied by a voice-over narrative about the "History of Heaven" in religious books. The film is divided into several sections with the short text "Moon, Manipulated, Highest Prayer, Tarot, Death, Freedom" and so on. If the expressions of male and female emotions in the film are the repetition of different versions of "To the Wonderland", the sea, the wild natural scenery, and the sky, these pictures from the great photographer Emmanuel Rubezki, are again " The "Tree of Life" style continues. There are modern high-rise buildings in brightly lit cities, as well as the desolate and invisible nature of the wild countryside. The first picture is a disabled black man in a private clinic, and the next picture may be overwhelmed by babies crawling on the ground. In the various jumps and the shuttle of time frames, what the audience can do is to piece together their possible understanding and depth according to their own imagination and experience.
"Knight of Cups" is like a surreal dream. The story tells the Hollywood director Rick, played by Christian Charles Philip Bale, experiences temptation, confusion, indulgence, and detachment in a materialistic world. There are very few dialogues in the whole movie, and the inner monologues and narrations of a large number of characters occupy most of the time. This is a hedonistic Hollywood lifestyle, but it is more like an illusion for our audience. In the film, Malik once again let go of any "clear rules and precepts" related to narration, put people's thoughts on the commanding heights, and created a stream of consciousness-like audio-visual feast, a beautiful illusion like a dream scattered. In the story, the audience accompanies each character to experience love and being loved, and reexamine the true meaning of life together.
