Christian Bale baffled by Terrence Malick on Knight of Cups shoot

Christian Bale has admitted he was left a little clueless as to what was going on during the making of Terrence Malick’s latest film Knight of Cups.

Speaking over the weekend at the Berlin film festival, where the romantic fantasy is debuting in competition for the main Golden Bear and Silver Bear prizes, Bale said he shot his part without a script and did not receive any instruction from the maverick film-maker to help him paint a picture of the movie’s theme.

“He didn’t tell us what it was about,” Bale said. “He really just gave me the character description. We worked on the character a great deal, worked on his backstory.”

He added: “I never had any lines to learn, but I’d see other people, and they’d have pages. I’d always look over their shoulders to see what it was that I was going to be told. I never knew what I was going to be doing each day.”

The double Oscar-winning actor also revealed Malick’s penchant for “torpedoing” his cast with “different actors and non-actors to get a very real response.”

Knight of Cups stars Bale as an LA screenwriter trying to make sense of a series of bizarre experiences. Other members of the cast include Natalie Portman, Cate Blanchett, Brian Dennehy and Antonio Banderas.

Bale is not the first Malick castmember to reveal confusion at the director’s unorthodox methods. In 2011, The Tree of Life star Sean Penn told Le Figaro he failed to comprehend the Palme D’Or-winning film’s offbeat structure and admitted he was unsure why he had been asked to join the cast.

“The screenplay is the most magnificent one that I’ve ever read but I couldn’t find that same emotion on screen,” said Penn. “A clearer and more conventional narrative would have helped the film without, in my opinion, lessening its beauty and its impact. Frankly, I’m still trying to figure out what I’m doing there and what I was supposed to add in that context! What’s more, Terry himself never managed to explain it to me clearly.”