Malick and the Cinema of Absolution

Terrence Malick, the director of the last movie showed today, has never been normal. Even his first film, Badlands, remains to be a bit of a strange film. The film is another one in a chain of films about a young couple who go on a violent rampage, however it is unlike the rest. Malick doesn't focus on the violence, he focuses on the characters and what might drive them to violence, but doesn't reveal any answers either.

His cinematography is constantly stunning. Even in his first film are these expressionistic shots he became revered because of. His influence can be clearly seen in the video link below:
Not Directed by Terrence Malick
Movies represented there are not too often the beaten path either, Man of Steel being the best example of this.

Malick seems to be searching in many ways for a cinema of absolutes. He began trying to find it in the tabloids, then in literature, history, The Bible paralleled with the near past, etc. Coming next is a work that seems nearly as uncategorizable as the rest of his filmography. Knight of Cups is described as a fantasy romance drama when you google it but let me know if this trailer backs that statement up or those just seem to be ways to put the film into a box: 

The reason I call it cinema of absolutes is because Malick seems with each film to dive into himself. Tree of Life was questioned because of the dinosaurs and other elements. Knight of Cups, it's reported, has no script. Antonio Banderas, who acts in it, had this to say about it: "I arrived to the set and basically what he said to me, he says , ‘Antonio, we didn’t send you a script because we don’t have a script and so this monologue that I gave you,’ which literally didn’t make sense whatsoever, ‘I’m gonna shoot it in nine different locations and I’m gonna just improvise with you, and I’m gonna send you something that I call torpedoes.’  And these torpedoes, they were people that came in the middle of the monologue and started improvising with me.  He sent me a beautiful woman, he sent me an old lady, he sent me a bunch of three guys that are rappers.  I ended up in a pool with three ladies with my tuxedo." I think that Malick hopes to find one image that will speak to all but can't seem to find it and his filmography is about finding the truth. His truth, truth for all, it's not clear but I certainly want to journey with Malick.