Terrence Malick makes moments the main characters in 'Knight of Cups'

Terrence Malick will never be accused of plagiarizing Aristotle's ancient blueprint for dramatic plotting and character development. They barely exist in "Knight of Cups," an impressionistic, stream-of-consciousness work ever-so-slowly propelled along by the moody currents of emotion.

"Knight of Cups" - it refers to a Tarot card showing an adventurer guided by his feelings - stars the game-for-anything Christian Bale as Rick, a Hollywood screenwriter with unresolved issues about his troubled brother (Wes Bentley), his aging father (Brian Dennehy) and at least six women (among them Cate Blanchett, Freida Pinto, Natalie Portman and Imogen Poots), important to him at different stages in his life.

The movie opens with a cryptic fairy tale reference to a prince trapped in a deep sleep, no doubt Rick's middle-class, midlife malaise expressed by the chronology-shuffled events (much like a deck of Tarot cards?) carefully constructed by Emmanuel Lubezki's wide-angled, probing camera lens.

This would almost be a silent movie, except for the monotoned, voice-over narration, preferred by Malick over dialogue exchanges. "We're not leading the lives we were meant for," one of Rick's women says. "We were meant for something else!"

"Knight of Cups" reminds us that our emotions and special moments may be fleeting, yet remain powerful "core memories" (to borrow an "Inside Out" phrase).

In more mainstream movies, these would be called upon to support a main plot and its characters. Here, Malick blends poetic imagery with an emotion-infused score to turn these moments themselves into the stars of "Knight of Cups."

The idea sounds lovely. But the effect is like looking at a portrait of passion instead of a portrait of people feeling passionate. The humanity feels one step removed.