Director Terrence Malick has always been known for his eccentricities as a filmmaker, eschewing interviews entirely and shooting films his own way. For his new film “Knight of Cups,” opening Friday in the District, the mercurial artist came up with just the basic outline of a story, hired his actors and basically said “go.”
The film stars Christian Bale as Rick, a Hollywood screenwriter in a film that was almost exclusively improvised in and around Los Angeles. As with Mr. Malick’s previous films, “Knight of Cups” is heavy on dreamlike imagery, loosely connected characters, multiple voiceovers and an artistic spontaneity — although some might call it nebulous — in search of truth.
“It was such a dream to arrive on set and to be thrown in the deep end,” said Australian actress Teresa Palmer, who co-stars in several key scenes with Mr. Bale as Karen, a stripper. “What a learning curve for an actor to be thrown on set, working opposite Christian Bale, and then to be able to improv and ad lib. It was such an exercise in self-exploration, and I truly find it liberating.”
So mysterious were the conditions of the filmmaking that when Mr. Bale first met Miss Palmer on set, he assumed she was in fact a real stripper. Mr. Bale, who is Welsh, spoke to her in his character’s American accent, and Miss Palmer did the same.
“I thought he was in character and he was being method, and I thought he’s testing me, so I have to be in character too,” Miss Palmer recalls with a laugh, adding that she created an elaborate backstory for Karen in conversation with Mr. Bale that day.
“Apparently a few days later he was driving down Sunset Blvd. and he saw a poster for [my previous film] ’Warm Bodies,’ and he was like ’Hey, that’s the stripper!’” Miss Palmer said. “We just laughed about it the entire day.”
Veteran actor Brian Dennehy portrays Rick’s father, Joseph, a surly old alcoholic. In a career spanning decades, Mr. Dennehy has starred in over 125 films and notably on Broadway as Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman.”
Mr. Dennehy believes that Joseph is loosely based on Mr. Malick’s own father, calling Joseph “very much in the mold of what Terrence describes in the movie about his father.” He and his director spoke often of father-son relationships during the Los Angeles shoot, which brought to mind thoughts of Mr. Dennehy’s late father, who worked as a writer for The Associated Press.
“My father was a very easygoing guy most of the time, but every once in a while when he would drink one or two drinks too many, he got ’Irish mean,’ but that was rare,” Mr. Dennehy said. “I miss him a lot; we had great conversations.”
Mr. Dennehy echoed what co-star Miss Palmer said about Mr. Malick’s working without a script, saying the improvisational nature of the shoot led to great opportunities for “spontaneity.”
“He wanted the actors to be very much a part of the creation,” Mr. Dennehy said. “We weren’t tied to a specific script, [so] there was a spontaneity that was very interesting in the end.”
Miss Palmer added she wasn’t even sure she would be in the final product given Mr. Malick’s unique method.
“You would do the work and then just make peace with the fact that one day it would be on the screen and maybe it wouldn’t, and that’s OK,” she said. “Just the experience of being around such a filmmaking icon is enough. And it really reinvigorated my passion in making movies and being a part of them.”
Miss Palmer, who divides her year between Los Angeles and her native Adelaide, wrote the film “The Ever After” and said she has ambitions to write more scripts. She is also directing a documentary about a particularly tough neighborhood of Philadelphia.
“I had such a unique time living [in Australia] and growing up there, and I want my son to experience both being in America and being an Aussie,” Miss Palmer said of her bi-hemispheric life with her husband and child.
Mr. Dennehy, meanwhile, says that he would like to complete the entire “Beckett canon” by starring on stage in the playwright’s “End Game.”
“People keep telling me I should do [’King] Lear,’ but I think I’m too old for ’Lear’ now,” he said. “Not so much in terms of the age of the character, but just the strength to do it.”
• Eric Althoff can be reached at twt@washingtontimes.com.
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