T

Chapter Eleven

The Gifts of Death

Visions of Sacrifice in the Worlds of Terrence Malick

Vernon W. Cisney

0] Since his return to filmmaking two decades ago, the films of Terrence Malick
have each, in some way, reflected deeply upon the ways in which human
beings make meaning of suffering—whether in the chaos and destruction of
war, the loss of cultural innocence and the human estrangement from the
natural world, the death of a child, the anemia of religious faith in the face of
seemingly interminable anguish, or the betrayal of marital infidelity. Each
film explores what Hubert Dreyfus and Camilo Salazar Prince aptly refer to
as “world collapse”—”the loss of what gives meaning to one’s world” 1 —as
well as the question of the restoration of that meaning; and each film holds
out the earnest hope that such restoration is possible. Each of Malick’s post-
hiatus films poses a question: In the face of this, is it still possible to say
“yes” to life? And each film (not to say every character) ultimately answers
in the affirmative. Given this hope, I have argued elsewhere that Malick
espouses in his films (in particular in The Tree of Life, 2011) an affirmative
worldview, a philosophical outlook that, as I define it, embraces the beauty
and glory of life in its immanent entirety, of which suffering and death are
necessary components. 2 In The Tree of Life, for instance, the driving question
is, is it possible to restore sense to the world, to restore the world itself, when
one has lost a child? The film answers this question in the affirmative when,
in the symbolic gesture of the release of her son, Mrs. O’Brien’s loss ceases
to be passive, and becomes active, and she indeed answers “yes” to that
question: “I give him to you; I give you my son.” 3 Mrs. O’Brien (Jessica
Chastain) affirms her release, in order to restore a sense to her world.
1] But it also seems that Malick pushes the envelope on this philosophical
issue, progressively making the primary questions in his films not only more
 Vernon W. Cisney

relatable, but by that very relatability, also more difficult to respond to

affirmatively. This is certainly the case in his 2015 film, Knight of Cups. The
film focuses on a spiritual or philosophical crisis on the part of a Hollywood
screenwriter named Rick (Christian Bale). Between the suicide of Rick’s
brother and the strained relationships with his father and surviving brother,
Rick indulges in the Bacchanalian life of the Hollywood aesthete, seeking to
quell his anguish through sensuous experiences, which only produces the
converse effect of intensifying Rick’s perceptions of his own internal empti-
ness. He drifts through various types of erotic relationships, ranging from the
purely physical to the well-worn trope of the unhappy marriage. But none of
these relationships endows his life with any significance, as they are merely
attempts at physical or emotional anesthesia meant to superficially occlude a
crisis that stems from a much deeper part of Rick’s nature; as Della (Imogen
Poots), one of his love interests, says to him, “You don’t want love, you want
a love experience” 4 —the surface effect of emotional gratification without
the transformative depth and commitment of the real thing. Unable to block
out his brokenness through erotic means, Rick suffers. This suffering is the
philosophical focus of the film. In one of the final soliloquies in the film,
Father Zeitlinger (Armin Mueller-Stahl) addresses the theme of suffering in
the following way: “To suffer binds you to something higher than yourself,
higher than your own will. Takes you from the world, to find what lies
beyond it. We are not only to endure patiently the troubles He sends. We are
to regard them as gifts, as gifts more precious than the happiness we wish for
ourselves.” 5 The driving question of Knight of Cups is, Is it possible to say
“yes” to this?
Notice, this question—is it possible to say thank you for our sufferings?—
ups the ante of Malick’s project significantly. It is one thing to hold the
view—as in The Tree of Life—that suffering and death do not constitute
defeating objections to the beauty and value of life—that it is still possible
and desirable to aim at the affirmation of life itself, of which suffering and
death are components, thereby restoring the sense to the world. But it is
another thing entirely to say that we ought not merely slog through our
periods of suffering, nor even simply seek to overcome them or transfigure
them into joys, but rather, that we are to be thankful for our sufferings, in
themselves. As they say, the devil seems to be in the details, which is to say
that the difference between these two types of affirmation is in the extent to
which the individual moments and experiences of suffering themselves are to
be affirmed. While both edicts can be seen as embracing what I have called
an affirmative worldview, it seems as though the Tree of Life version points
toward what we might call a secondary affirmation of suffering—one that
affirms suffering only insofar as it is a necessary and inextricable component
of life itself. The version of the affirmative worldview offered by Father
Zeitlinger in Knight of Cups, on the other hand, points toward a primary
 T The Gifts of Death

affirmation of suffering, expressing gratitude for the suffering itself. This

seems to constitute a difference in degree so great as to amount to a differ-
ence in kind. Admittedly, while this primary version of the affirmative
worldview is certainly more robust, its robustness concomitantly makes this
type of affirmation seem utterly impossible. How, after all, are we to be
thankful for our suffering?
3] This chapter will therefore analyze the connection between these two
modes of the affirmative worldview. It seems that what unites the secondary
affirmation found in The Tree of Life and the more robust primary affirma-
tion found in Knight of Cups is a meditation on death, and in particular, on
the notion of death as gift. That is to say, these two films offer profound
reflections on various modes of the sacrificial. Furthermore, when we ana-
lyze the structure of the sacrificial, we will discover that without this seem-
ingly impossible primary affirmation, the secondary affirmation is not pos-
sible. My exploration will hinge on the double genitive in the phrase, “the
gifts of death.” I will argue in this paper that the philosophical path outlined
between The Tree of Life and Knight of Cups moves from the sense of death
offered as a gift, to the sense of gifts made possible or given by a certain kind
of death—the kenotic 6 self-emptying described by the Christian apostle,
Saint Paul, as a dying of the self. 7 The structure of this kenosis demands that
we willingly and joyfully sacrifice every temporal, impermanent aspect of
our lives, everything that matters to us, which thereby enables the ever-
renewed receiving of the temporal. This sacrificial act enables the potential
saturation of each moment with grace. We can only receive as a gift, with
gratitude, what we do not already possess as an entitlement. And thus, our
comportment toward the temporal must undergo an ongoing act of sacrifice.
My touchstone thinker for this analysis will be the Danish philosopher, Søren
Kierkegaard. 8

4] THE DOUBLE MOVEMENT: INFINITY AND TEMPORALITY

5] For the structure of the sacrificial, we will look to Kierkegaard’s Fear and
Trembling. 9 Besides being arguably the cornerstone text of twentieth century
existentialism, Fear and Trembling is likely the single most famous extended
philosophical analysis of the Hebrew story of the Akedah—Abraham’s sacri-
fice of his son, Isaac. 10 According to the biblical account, Abraham—the
credited progenitor of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions—had
been called forth from his family and from his homeland by the Hebrew God
Yahweh, and had been instructed to settle in the land of Canaan in the ancient
Near East. Numerous times along the way, Yahweh or one of his emissaries
promises to Abraham that his descendants will one day constitute a powerful
nation. It is furthermore promised that the lineage of these descendants will
 Vernon W. Cisney DRAF

come from a child to be born to Abraham and his wife, Sarah. This promise
is met with skepticism bordering on mockery by both Abraham and Sarah, as
Sarah is not only infertile (and has been her entire life), but she is also
drawing close to a hundred years old, and is hence well past child-bearing
years. But the scriptural account claims that Sarah does in fact give birth to a
son, naming him “Yitzak” or “Isaac,” a word with etymological origins in the
Hebrew word for “laughter,” commemorating the laughter of Sarah and
Abraham.
The next significant event recounted in the life of Isaac is the Akedah, the
moment when Abraham offers him up as a sacrifice. In the Genesis account,
God says to Abraham, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love,
and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one
of the mountains that I shall show you.” 11 It is crucial to recognize the
magnitude of this demand on the part of God. Not only does it require of
Abraham that he sacrifice his son (which would be horrifying under any
circumstances), but moreover, Isaac had been conceived under miraculous
circumstances, based upon a promise made to Abraham and Sarah by Yah-
weh himself—the promise that Isaac was to be the wellspring of God’s
people. As Kierkegaard says, “Thus everything was lost, which is even more
frightful than if it had never happened!” 12 Nevertheless, in response to this
command, Abraham, along with two of his servants and Isaac, saddle up and
head toward Moriah, a three-day journey, according to the story. When they
approach the site, Abraham and Isaac proceed up the hillside alone, where
Abraham builds the altar, binds Isaac to it, and extends his hand—bearing the
knife—to commit the sacrificial act (of murdering his son). But at the deci-
sive moment, an angel appears to Abraham, saying, “Do not lay your hand on
the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you
have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” 13 At this point, Abra-
ham sees a ram tangled in a thicket, and offers the ram as a substitute
sacrifice. Afterwards, Yahweh once more affirms to Abraham that his de-
scendants will be “as numerous as the stars of heaven,” 14 that they will be
blessed and powerful, the envy of other nations.
This story raises as many questions as it answers. Yahweh does not ex-
plain in the story why such a horrifying trial is demanded of Abraham, and
Abraham, interestingly enough, does not ask. It seems strange to modern
sensibilities that a God who purportedly knows the hearts and minds of
human beings would require a test of fidelity, especially one so agonizing for
the examinee who has already sacrificed a great deal, leaving his home and
his family, for this god. The story recounts no objections on the part of
Abraham, unlike the Exodus accounts of the calling of Moses, and in no way
addresses any response or any lingering effects on the part of Isaac. It is not
clear on the basis of the story whether Abraham at some point told Isaac what
he was planning to do and Isaac willingly submitted, or if Abraham overpow-
 T The Gifts of Death

ered and forcibly bound Isaac. The former seems difficult to accept, but the
latter seems physically implausible, given that Abraham is well past the age
of one hundred years old by this point. Furthermore, there is no discussion of
any fallout from the sacrificial act, as no more is said of the later relationship
between Abraham and Isaac. Thus, it is an extremely difficult story to digest.
Nevertheless, some version 15 of this story is the cornerstone of the three
major, monotheistic religions.
8] Kierkegaard’s interest in this story lies in its human dimensions, which
are almost always overlooked, he argues, in modern recountings. According
to Kierkegaard, post-Enlightenment thought has, arguably for good reasons,
attempted to completely rationalize religious belief and practice, but in so
doing has sterilized it of its “passion.” 16 Modernity, at least by its proclama-
tions, honors “faith” and as such, many modern religious leaders and even
politicians honor Abraham, if only in word. 17 Yet in honoring Abraham’s act
of sacrifice, we frequently, conveniently forget the uncomfortable fact that
the “ethical expression for what Abraham did is that he intended to murder
Isaac.” 18 We honor a man who is, by every single existing ethical framework
we hold, a murderer, and not just any ol’ run-of-the-mill murderer, mind you;
Abraham wills, in his heart, the murder of his own son. By any ethical
standard, Abraham is a monster, not a hero. The Akedah is a horrifying story
on multiple levels; so our tendency is to water the story down, and attenuate
the horror. With the benefit of hindsight, looking at the story from the tail
end, we assume that the moral is, just trust God, and everything will be
alright. Abraham, however, did not have the benefit of hindsight, and as
such, whatever hope Abraham might have had—hope that everything was
going to somehow turn out all right—was nothing short, Kierkegaard says, of
“madness” 19 —rooted in a decision made in the face of excruciating existen-
tial anxiety, an anxiety that Abraham carried with him from the moment of
the command to the moment of the reprieve.
9] This anxiety abides in the structure of “double movement” 20 proper to
what Kierkegaard calls the “paradox” that he associates with faith, “that there
is an inwardness that is incommensurable with the outer, an inwardness that,
mind you, is not identical with that first one [of the ethical sphere] but is a
new inwardness.” 21 This inwardness is reached only by way of the sacrifice.
That it is a sacrifice requires the dimension of faith, without which the
sacrificial act is merely murder or termination (i.e., not sacrifice). The sacrifi-
cial also entails that the immolator love the offering absolutely. One can
easily dispense with an object of disregard or of lukewarm affection. But
strictly speaking, for the act to be a sacrifice requires love—the loss, whether
perceived or real, of what one relinquishes in the offering must hurt. Most
obviously, the sacrifice further requires the renunciation of the love object.
Then finally (and most uniquely), on Kierkegaard’s account, the faith aspect
 Vernon W. Cisney

entails the belief in the return of the love object—the hope of a return, not in
some future existence, but rather, in this life.
This final element is likely the most difficult to accept, particularly for [11.
many of those individuals who would consider themselves persons of faith.
Why, after all, must faith be for this life, especially when so many forms of
religious thought emphasize the next life? According to Kierkegaard, placing
one’s emphasis on the afterlife amounts to a paltry, anemic understanding of
the notion of faith, in that there is not really a hope of return, but rather, the
belief in the logically entailed continuation of the banal, but in the immaterial
realm. On this paltry understanding of faith, Kierkegaard holds, the immola-
tor is merely removing the love object from a physical world to which it does
not properly belong, and sending it to a spiritual world where it does properly
belong. Moreover, the individual is, in a sense, maintaining some conviction
of power to regain that which one has sacrificed, insofar as one could, pre-
sumably, remove themselves from the world at any given moment, at which
point the immolator would, through a voluntaristic effort on their own part,
regain the sacrificed love object. For Kierkegaard, there is nothing miracu-
lous about any of this. “But Abraham believed and believed for this life. To
be sure, had his faith been only for a future life, he could indeed more easily
have cast everything away in order to hurry out of the world to which he did
not belong.” 22
On Kierkegaard’s understanding, we see the double movement identified [11.
as one of renunciation and return. Without renunciation, we remain servile, at
the mercy of the transiency of temporality. Only in the mode of renunciation
do we come to the awareness of the eternal: “Infinite resignation is the last
stage before faith, so that whoever has not made this movement does not
have faith. For only in infinite resignation do I become transparent to myself
in my eternal validity, and only then can there be talk of laying hold of
existence by virtue of faith.” 23 But the movement of faith is the hope for and
awareness of the return of the temporal, and, this cannot be overstated, it is
by virtue of this double movement—renunciation and return—that one truly
gains the temporal for the first time, receiving it now as gift, rather than
perceiving it as entitlement.
The meaning of this gift can be illuminated by way of a quick joke. One [11.
day a spouse, bored and dispirited in their marriage, says to their partner:
“Why don’t you ever do anything unexpected for me?” The partner, who
prides themselves on making frequent and ongoing efforts to stoke the fires
of romance in the marriage, confusedly responds, “What do you mean? I do
unexpected things for you all the time! I surprise you with flowers at work; I
leave you love notes in your car; I even buy you little gifts just because. I
don’t understand!” To this, the complainant responds, “I know, but as my
partner, I expect you to do those things!”
 T The Gifts of Death

13] When we live our lives with a sense of entitlement, it becomes impossible
to ever truly receive anything at all. Whatever we get, we feel we are owed,
and as a result, we cannot rejoice in the receiving of it, (for, after all, it is
expected). Gratitude is impossible. But we suffer on account of what we do
not get, because it, too, is owed to us; it, too, is expected. In the worst modes
of this existential comportment, we live life blind and indifferent to the glory
in our lives, and acutely aware of all of the faults and insufficiencies. The
same is true when it comes to those we love. Our tendency, indeed, an almost
unavoidable propensity when it comes to love, is to cling, jealously and
possessively, to those we love. But to the extent that the beloved becomes
possession or entitlement, they are in that same measure not the beloved.
Kierkegaard’s sacrificial structure, constituted by the ongoing double move-
ment of renunciation and return, makes possible the continually renewed
attentiveness to the upsurge of grace in one’s life, making it possible to
receive our lives and our loves as gifts in every moment, as cause for joy. As
Clare Carlisle writes, “Insofar as a gift is given to me it does become mine;
but insofar as I continue to regard it as a gift, I continue to regard myself as
someone who receives it—and receiving something is different from pos-
sessing it.” 24 It is in this way that, as Kierkegaard writes, Abraham “received
Isaac more joyfully than the first time.” 25

14] I GIVE YOU MY SON

15] Having now laid bare the sacrificial structure, let us see it at work in The
Tree of Life. At the outset of the film, we are presented with an apparent
dichotomy, one that will function throughout the remainder of the film, a
distinction between the way of nature on the one hand, and the way of grace
on the other:

16] The nuns taught us there were two ways through life—the way of nature and
the way of grace. You have to choose which one you’ll follow. Grace doesn’t
try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults
and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too.
Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy
when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things.
They taught us that no one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad
end. 26

17] We are here presented with a choice, between our nature, which we are given
to understand is an expression or extension of the world of nature itself, and
the way of grace. The way of nature is concerned with self-assertion, domi-
nation, and the praise and recognition of others. It is violent, deceptive,
domineering, and utterly amoral. The way of nature is never satisfied with
 Vernon W. Cisney DRAF

anything it has, ever striving for more, and as such, it fails to take notice of or
express gratitude for any of the goodness in its life. The way of grace, on the
other hand, loves and gives selflessly, recognizing and seeking to mirror and
act as a conduit for the glory with which the world is saturated. It responds,
often unreflectively and unselfconsciously, to the suffering of others. It does
not seek or measure the public image of its acts of grace, never letting the left
hand know what the right is doing. 27 The apparent struggle between these
two ways dominates the entirety of the film.
Moreover, the film blatantly tries to pull the viewer into the recognition of [11.
a clear hero and a clear villain, with Mrs. and Mr. O’Brien respectively
embodying the ways of grace and of nature. Mrs. O’Brien exudes a soft,
loving, good-humored demeanor throughout the film. She kisses the children
lovingly on their heads each night before bed, wakes them playfully in the
mornings, dances joyfully in the front yard, reads stories to them, and advises
them to forgive each other and to love everyone, lest their lives flash by
them, to love every leaf and every ray of light. By contrast, Mr. O’Brien
(Brad Pitt) wakes the children forcefully, demands their unambiguous re-
spect, insists that the boys owe him love, and that the children call him
“father” and “sir.” He declares to the boys that their mother is “naïve” and
that one cannot be too good, lest the world take advantage of them, a view
signified most saliently by the fight instruction in the front yard. The lesson
that Mr. O’Brien sees as most valuable to the children’s upbringing is that the
world is cruel and lives by trickery, and that the only way to make something
of oneself is by sheer force of will. We the viewers are meant to see this
cosmic conflict—between nature and grace—in the individual person of Jack
(Hunter McCracken, Sean Penn) himself who embodies the conflict between
his father and mother, grace and nature, in his own person: “Mother. Father.
Always you wrestle inside me. Always you will.” 28
But as I have elsewhere argued, it seems that this distinction between the [11.
ways of nature and of grace is ultimately unsustainable. Each of the pur-
ported two ways succumbs, finally, to the contamination and indiscernibility
of its other. For the way of nature, this manifests in an inability to be weak, a
weakness when it comes to weakness itself. The way of nature, in its purest
mode, lacks the strength that it takes to be weak. This is laid out very clearly
in a few key scenes in the film. First, on at least two occasions, we see Mr.
O’Brien, as he is leaving the presence of his children—once in their bed-
room, once in their front yard—turn to them with a look on his face as if to
say something (“I love you,” perhaps), but he freezes, unable to speak, before
finally resuming his path of exit. His desire to express his love (a word that
we only hear Mr. O’Brien use toward himself) for his children, is evident in
his bodily mannerisms, but in the end, he is unable to bring himself to do it.
He is so strong that he is too weak to allow himself to be weak. The second
clear example of the weakness of the way of nature is made quite explicit in
DRAFT The Gifts of Death

Mr. O’Brien’s soliloquizing about how one becomes something great. The
words he uses are: “You can’t say I can’t.” The psychological, emotional,
and philosophical inability to allow oneself to express an inability is still, at
the end of the day, an inability. Mr. O’Brien’s is a strength that is too weak to
be weak.
[11.20] Something similar happens with the way of grace. It is important to note
that the way of nature thrives on its own assertion of self. It seeks to manifest
itself and to satisfy its desires. Strictly speaking, the way of nature has no
dialectical other, nothing against which it must first define itself. The same
cannot be said of the way of grace. The way of grace only posits itself as
such in contradistinction to the way of nature, which is its spiritual antipode.
Grace’s criticism of the way of nature is that the way of nature seeks domina-
tion in the name of self-assertion. But in point of fact, so too does the way of
grace, considered in its abstract and philosophical formulation. In the name
of “acceptance” and “submission,” the way of grace creates for itself—in the
way of nature—an opposing force, an enemy that must be overcome.
[11.21] What I have called the “collapse of the two ways” in The Tree of Life
occurs in two distinct moments that more or less bookend the narrative. Each
putatively distinct way ultimately faces its own crisis. For Mr. O’Brien, this
occurs when, despite his very best efforts as a husband, father, religious
devotee, and above all else, as a worker, his plant closes, forcing him to
choose between, as he says, “no job, or a transfer, to a job nobody wants.” 29
Like the biblical account of Job, a quote from which prefaces the film, Mr.
O’Brien had believed that, if only he did everything right in his life, he could
curry favor with God, overpower the external forces of nature, and thus, he
could master fate. Despite the fact that he had never been late to or missed a
day of work, despite the fact that he went to church and tithed every Sunday,
his efforts at self-assertion and the mastery of the natural world ultimately
collapsed, at which point he comes face to face with the way of grace: “I
wanted to be loved ‘cause I was great—a big man. Now, I’m nothing. Look.
The glory around. Trees. Birds. I dishonored it all and didn’t notice the
glory.” 30
[11.22] But Mrs. O’Brien’s way of grace meets with a similar collapse, and it is
indeed this collapse in particular that structures the narrative of the film. In
the opening moments of the film, as Mrs. O’Brien utters the voice-over, “I
will be true to you, whatever comes,” she receives a Western Union tele-
gram, informing her of the death of her middle child, R.L. (Laramie Eppler).
It is this death that causes her “world collapse,” 31 provoking her crisis of
faith, and it is this death that has forged the rupture in the older Jack’s sense
of identity, and so it is this death that Jack must come to terms with. In the
voice-overs that follow the news, we hear Mrs. O’Brien saying to God: “Was
I false to you?” “What did you gain?” and even commanding, “Answer me.”
It becomes clear through this ongoing inquiry that Mrs. O’Brien, just like Mr.
 Vernon W. Cisney

O’Brien, had made assumptions about her ability to master fate. She has
allowed herself to believe that, by being faithful to God, by living her life in
accordance with the way of grace, by loving everyone, forgiving acts of
wrongdoing, and appreciating the glory in the world around, she could some-
how stop the natural order of things, that the causal order of the cosmos could
somehow be suspended for those that she loved, that the necessary connec-
tions of cause and effect would be interrupted by the God whom she had so
dutifully served, so as to work things according to her plans, that she could
overcome nature through grace.
Mrs. O’Brien’s freedom is attained when she at last recognizes the iden- [11.
tity of the ways of nature and of grace, that she affirms her act of release of
R.L., and thereby, the passion of her suffering becomes active, with her
recognition that the glory of God is revealed in the whole of the natural
world, and that the natural world would not be so without suffering and
death. In a way, Mrs. O’Brien’s act of release seems to be a sacrificial act.
She lifts her hands to the heavens, saying, “I give him to you; I give you my
son,” 32 almost directly invoking Yahweh’s words to Abraham, “You have
not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” 33 Like Abraham, Mrs.
O’Brien was asked to make the ultimate sacrifice, to renounce her child. It is
abundantly clear that Mrs. O’Brien loves R.L. deeply. We are even given
evidence that perhaps R.L. is Mrs. O’Brien’s favorite child. In one scene, as
the boys are going to bed and Mrs. O’Brien is tucking them in, Jack asks her,
“Who do you love the most?” Sitting on R.L.’s bed beside him, she looks at
R.L., smiles, gently strokes his belly, and says, in response to Jack’s ques-
tion, (while maintaining focus on R.L.), “I love you all the same.” But her
body language seems to suggest a preference.
The moment of Mrs. O’Brien’s sacrificial act is immediately preceded by [11.
the “heavenly” beach scene, to which Leslie MacAvoy refers as “by far the
strangest and most ambiguous section of the film.” 34 The beach scene is the
dramatic resolution of the film, wherein an adult Jack wanders a shoreline,
apparently signifying some sort of spiritual reconciliation with his family
members who, despite Jack’s current mid-life appearance, all present them-
selves in the younger ages and stages of life at which the younger Jack had
first felt himself ruptured from them. Along this beach, we see Mrs. O’Brien
exuberantly grab hold of her husband and kiss him, with an obvious love that
we did not once see during the family’s dramatic narrative in Texas. We see
the parents, both mother and father, embrace the child R.L. again. Moreover,
in light of our explication above of the sacrificial structure—involving the
double movement of renunciation and return, by which one truly gains the
temporal for the first time, as gift—it is very interesting to note the way in
which these scenes juxtapose images of return and release. Immediately fol-
lowing the beach scene of Mrs. O’Brien’s embrace of R.L. is her sacrificial
scene, in which she lifts her hands to heaven and offers him up. This juxtapo-
 T The Gifts of Death

sition suggests that Mrs. O’Brien’s restoration of R.L. is simultaneous with

her sacrifice of him, suggesting, perhaps, that only here, in this imagined
paradise contemporaneous with her sacrifice, does she receive R.L. for the
first time.
25] Admittedly, the distinctions between this narrative and that of Abraham
are obvious. Abraham was asked to make the sacrifice, while Mrs. O’Brien
was not given a choice. In addition, Isaac did not actually die, while R.L. did.
So it may seem strange to say that she gains R.L. for the first time, only after
he has passed; but then again, perhaps not. Perhaps the gaining or the receiv-
ing entails only the full recognition that R.L. was never hers to begin with.
This sacrificial act would then be accompanied by the ability to love him for
the gift that he was, as opposed to the perceived property that she has lost.
The question, then, becomes, how does one make this movement? For that, I
will turn to Malick’s 2015 film, Knight of Cups.

26] THE PIECES OF YOUR LIFE

27] Like most of Malick’s later films, Knight of Cups divided professional film
critics from, “There’s a line between artful and arty, and Malick has crossed
it,” 35 to “The sheer freedom of it is intoxicating if you meet the film on its
own level.” 36 Knight of Cups, however, provides a unique component of
Malick’s philosophical development in that it is the first of Malick’s films to
deeply and extensively explore the question of selfhood as a journey through
the lens of a single individual’s spiritual/philosophical development. 37 As
David Davies notes, “It is often remarked that Malick’s films prescind from
what is normally a central concern for narrative cinema, namely, the presen-
tation of characters who are psychologically ‘thick’ in that the motivations
for their actions are made clear, usually through the dialogue in the diege-
sis.” 38 Knight of Cups is his most sustained counter-effort to this principle to
date. Like most of Malick’s films, the epigraphic words to Knight of Cups
provide a contextual lens that can be illuminative for thinking through the
rest of the film. Knight of Cups begins with a paraphrase, narrated by Ben
Kingsley, of the opening words from the 1678 novel, The Pilgrim’s
Progress, by John Bunyan: “The pilgrim’s progress, from this world to that
which is to come, delivered under the similitude of a dream, wherein is
discovered the manner of his setting out, his dangerous journey, and safe
arrival at the desired country.” 39 Bunyan’s religious allegory, “something
like an early novel,” 40 tells the story of a young man named Christian on a
journey from this world to the next. The text describes his progressive “as-
cent” by way of the realization and rectification of the obstacles on his path.
From this we can surmise that Knight of Cups is a film about a journey. But
the ontological status of these “worlds”—whether from an earthly life to a
 Vernon W. Cisney

heavenly afterlife, or the immanent “Christian experience of conversion lead-

ing to salvation” 41 —is an open question. Indeed, in Knight of Cups, the
journey seems to entail a transformation of oneself within this world, such
that the so-called “other world” becomes visible, via what Lloyd Michaels
refers to as an “ecstatic perception,” 42 within the everyday. The first time we
hear Rick speak, we see him descending a desert hillside toward what ap-
pears to be an oasis that, upon closer inspection, turns out to have been a
mirage. Through voice-over, Rick utters the words: “All those years, living
the life of someone I didn’t even know.” 43 The mirage image signifies the
direct inversion of the beach scene in The Tree of Life, where the water—
signifying spiritual sustenance, surrounds the characters and even saturates
the areas of land that emerge from the ebbing and flowing water. In Knight of
Cups, on the other hand, the source of nourishment is an illusion; this, cou-
pled with Rick’s words, indicate that what Rick had spent his life pursuing
could never make him whole, and indicate that the journey Rick is on is one
of self-discovery, or perhaps more appropriately put, it is a journey of be-
coming a self in the first place.
Like the O’Brien family in The Tree of Life, Rick comes from a family of
three boys, of whom Rick appears to be (like Jack in The Tree of Life) the
oldest. Like the O’Brien family, the relations between the children and the
father in Knight of Cups are severely strained, as the father (played master-
fully by Brian Dennehy) is a stern and unyielding man who demonstrates a
great deal of bitterness toward the sacrifices he has had to make in order to
provide for his family. Finally, like the O’Brien family, Rick’s family is
marked by the absence of a middle child, but while R.L.’s death in The Tree
of Life is left unexplained, the death of Rick’s brother is explicitly referred to
as a suicide. However, where The Tree of Life explores the crisis of religious
faith that is provoked by what philosophers of religion refer to as the “exis-
tential problem of evil” (the close-to-home experience of suffering so un-
bearable as to provoke a sense of the loss of the divine), Knight of Cups is
concerned with the fracturing of selfhood and the longing for self-identity,
understood now through the desire for love. We get a clearer sense of the
problem of the film through two scenes in which Rick’s father describes,
through voice-over, the “pieces of one’s life”:

My son, you’re just like I am. Can’t figure your life out, can’t put the pieces
together, just like me—a pilgrim on this earth, a stranger. . . . You think when
you reach a certain age, things will start making sense. Then you find out
you’re just as lost as you were before. I suppose that’s what damnation is—the
pieces of your life never to come together, just splashed out there. 44

In these scenes, the theme of damnation is explicitly invoked, and it is tied

directly to the notion of selfhood. Bringing these ideas together, Rick’s jour-
 T The Gifts of Death

ney is one toward selfhood, and if damnation is understood as the pieces of

one’s life never coming together, then it seems that salvation would be
understood, conversely, as the attainment of selfhood. Rick has pursued this
wholeness through the pursuit of love, perhaps in an effort to correct the
damages done by his father’s sternness and rigidity. But his continued bro-
kenness and failure in this pursuit results from the fact that his efforts in the
direction of love are all motivated by some version of self-gratification. In
some encounters, this takes the form of purely aesthetic, purely sensuous
concerns. In one of the most revelatory lines in the film, Della, one of Rick’s
many partners, says to him, “You don’t want love; you want a love experi-
ence.” 45 In others, it takes the form of romanticized ideals of what love is, as
signified by Helen’s equally revelatory lines, “Dreams are nice, but you can’t
live in them.” Still other times it is rooted in what looks like genuine commit-
ment, but a commitment that is also filtered through the aesthetic, as in the
case of Rick’s marriage; or when Rick has an affair with and impregnates a
married woman, attempting to convince her to leave her husband with him.
With each relationship, Rick seems to become more self-aware. But never-
theless, each relationship, motivated as it is by his own desires for whatever
sense of satisfaction is his going concern at that time, is ultimately doomed to
fail.
31] Rick’s realization, as in the case of Mrs. O’Brien, amounts to a sacrificial
act. But where Mrs. O’Brien’s sacrifice involved R.L.—the external object of
her love—in Rick’s case, it is he himself who must be sacrificed. It is he
himself, in his aesthetic self-concerns, who must be renounced, and in so
doing, it is he himself who is gained. This is revealed most clearly in the
soliloquy of Father Zeitlinger:

32] It seems you are alone; you are not. Even now, He’s taking your hand and
guiding you by a way you cannot see. If you are unhappy, you shouldn’t take it
as a mark of God’s disfavor; just the contrary. It might be the very sign He
loves you. He shows His love, not by helping you avoid suffering, but by
sending you suffering, by keeping you there. To suffer binds you to something
higher than yourself, higher than your own will. Takes you from the world to
find what lies beyond it. We are not only to endure patiently the troubles He
sends; we are to regard them as gifts, as gifts more precious than the happiness
we wish for ourselves. 46

33] To be able to welcome suffering as a gift, more precious even than our own
happiness, is to elevate oneself, to lift oneself up, as the object of sacrifice.
And just as the structure of the sacrificial dictates that one only really re-
ceives the temporal in the mode of sacrifice, likewise, Rick only opens the
possibility of becoming a self, in the mode of self-sacrifice, the kenotic
emptying of the self of which Saint Paul speaks. It is through suffering that
one is pulled from the immediacy and the entitlement of the world to the
 Vernon W. Cisney

eternal, and it is only through this moment that faith, as Kierkegaard under-
stands it, becomes possible. And this brings us back to Kierkegaard, who
writes, “And what will help him is precisely the anxiety and distress in which
the great are tried.” 47 In Works of Love, Kierkegaard writes of the act of self-
renunciation that results in the higher form of self-love: “And self-renuncia-
tion, which presses in as a judge to try self-love, is therefore double-edged in
that it cuts off both sides equally. It knows very well that there is a self-love
which one may call faithless self-love, but it knows just as well that there is a
self-love which may be called devoted self-love.” 48 For Kierkegaard, the
proper self-love is the love of God within oneself that abolishes all the
aesthetic categories of “faithless” self-love. And precisely in sacrificing the
temporal in this way, one becomes capable of gaining the temporal, by way
of the transfiguration of the temporal, “the enlivening vision of a great expec-
tation.” 49 It is perhaps no accident that the priest who utters these words on
suffering is named “Zeitlinger,” which translates literally to “time-linger.”
Moreover, we note that this same sort of self-emptying self-renunciation is
required in any act of sacrifice, including that of Abraham and of Mrs.
O’Brien. In sacrificing the object of her most intense love, Mrs. O’Brien is
simultaneously sacrificing that aspect of herself. She is committing an act of
self-sacrifice, without which her sacrifice of R.L. would not be possible.

CONCLUSION

In a letter from Johann Georg Hamann to Johann Gotthelf Lindner, dated

May 2, 1764, Hamann writes, “Periissem nisi periissem”—”I would have
perished had I not perished.” 50 This formulation appears strange at first
blush, but its strangeness begins to dissipate when we think about it in light
of the discussion of this chapter. Hamann seems to be suggesting that a
certain type of death was necessary in order to avoid a different kind of death.
The death of the self, the death of the “I,” in particular the death of the
aesthetic, sensuous mode of the “I,” is a necessary pre-condition on the
journey of becoming a self. With this in mind, we can pose to ourselves again
the question we posed at the outset of the paper. We asked, Is it possible to
say “thank you” to the receiving of suffering as precious gifts? It seems,
however difficult it may be, that this type of sacrifice of the self is a neces-
sary act in the constitution of a richer notion of self, one capable of the
attentiveness to the ever renewed upsurge of grace in the world. It moreover
seems to be the case that this theme of sacrifice ties together the questions
and responses of The Tree of Life and The Knight of Cups. Malick seems to
push us ever closer to the dictum uttered by Rick as the final line of Knight of
Cups: “Begin.”
 T The Gifts of Death

36] NOTES

1] 1. Hubert Dreyfus and Camilo Salazar Prince, “The Thin Red Line: Dying Without Demise,
Demise Without Dying,” in ed. David Davies, The Thin Red Line (London and New York:
Routledge, 2009), 29.
2] 2. See Vernon W. Cisney, “All the World is Shining, and Love is Smiling through All
Things: The Collapse of the ‘Two Ways’ in The Tree of Life,” in ed. Jonathan Beever and
Vernon W. Cisney, The Way of Nature and the Way of Grace: Philosophical Footholds on
Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2016), 213–32.
3] 3. The Tree of Life, dir. Terrence Malick (Los Angeles: Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2011).
4] 4. Knight of Cups, dir. Terrence Malick (Los Angeles: Broad Green Pictures, 2016).
5] 5. Ibid.
6] 6. “Kenosis” as an ethos stems from the Greek word meaning “emptying,” and is typified
in Christian theology by the death and resurrection of Christ, which is imitated in the ongoing
self-emptying and rebirth of the believer, as celebrated in the sacrament of baptism. The
emphasis stems from the book of Philippians, chapter 2, verses 5–8: “Let the same mind be in
you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality
with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being
born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became
obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross” (NRSV). See also Kevin M. Cronin,
Kenosis: Emptying Self and the Path of Christian Service (New York: Continuum, 1992); and
John B. Lounibos, Self-Emptying of Christ and the Christian: Three Essays on Kenosis (Eu-
gene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2011.
7] 7. See 1 Corinthians 15:31: “I die every day! That is as certain, brothers and sisters, as my
boasting of you—a boast that I make in Christ Jesus our Lord” (NRSV).
8] 8. As is well-known, Malick for a time undertook graduate study in philosophy at Oxford,
working with Gilbert Ryle. His initial goal was to write a thesis on the concept of world in the
work of Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Kierkegaard. That academic partnership was ultimately
ill-fated, and Malick left Oxford, returning to the United States where he soon began studying
filmmaking. Other works exploring connections between Malick and Kierkegaard include:
Robert Sinnerbrink, Terrence Malick: Filmmaker and Philosopher (London and New York:
Bloomsbury, 2019); Peter J. Leithart, Shining Glory: Theological Reflections on Terrence
Malick’s Tree of Life (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2013); and James Batcho, Terrence Ma-
lick’s Unseeing Cinema: Memory, Time, and Audibility (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmil-
lan, 2018).
9] 9. Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, ed. C. Stephen Evans and Sylvia Walsh, trans.
Sylvia Walsh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
10] 10. This story appears in Genesis, chapter 22.
11] 11. Genesis 22:2 (NRSV).
12] 12. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 16.
13] 13. Genesis 22:12 (NRSV).
14] 14. Genesis 22:17 (NRSV).
15] 15. Islam, by and large, holds that it was Ishmael, Abraham’s first son with Hagar, rather
than Isaac, who was offered up. See Bruce Feiler, Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three
Faiths (New York: William Morrow and Company, 2002), 102.
16] 16. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 27, 59.
17] 17. It is worth noting the dark underside of this post-Enlightenment rationalization, when it
extends to the public and political valorization of “faith.” When the belief in the truth-telling
capacities of logos attempts to drown out all other forms of meaning-making, there can result
the translation of the mythos dimensions of life through the framework of logos, resulting in the
sort of faith that we frequently refer to as “blind faith,” the fideistic literalizing of aspects of
religious life, resulting in the outright rejection of reason and the senses. This is salient when,
for instance, the American religious right rejects the evidence for evolution or, more danger-
ously, for climate change, despite the overwhelming evidence in support of them. For an
excellent account of this phenomenon, see Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God: A History of
Fundamentalism (New York: Random House, 2000).
 Vernon W. Cisney

18. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 24. [11n

19. Ibid., 14. [11n
20. Ibid., 29. [11n
21. Ibid., 60. [11n
22. Ibid., 17. [11n
23. Ibid., 39. [11n
24. Clare Carlisle, Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling: A Reader’s Guide (London and New [11n
York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010), 87.
25. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 29. [11n
26. The Tree of Life, 2011. [11n
27. Matthew 6:3. [11n
28. The Tree of Life, 2011. [11n
29. Ibid. [11n
30. Ibid. This quotation is a paraphrase of a passage from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Broth- [11n
ers Karamazov (1880), in the passage where Father Zosima reflects on the way in which his
brother led him to faith: “The windows of his room looked out into the garden, and our garden
was a shady one, with old trees in it which were coming into bud. The first birds of spring were
flitting in the branches, chirruping and singing at the windows. And looking at them and
admiring them, he began suddenly begging their forgiveness too, ‘Birds of heaven, happy birds,
forgive me, for I have sinned against you too.’ None of us could understand that at the time, but
he shed tears of joy. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there was such a glory of God all about me; birds, trees,
meadows, sky, only I lived in shame and dishonored it all and did not notice the beauty and the
glory,’ “ Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, Second Norton Critical Edition, ed.
Susan McReynolds Oddo, trans. Constance Garnett, rev. Ralph E. Matlaw and Susan McRey-
nolds Oddo (New York and London: Norton, 2011), 250.
31. Dreyfus and Prince, “The Thin Red Line: Dying Without Demise, Demise Without [11n
Dying,” in ed. Davies, The Thin Red Line, 29
32. The Tree of Life, 2011. [11n
33. Genesis 22:12 (NRSV). [11n
34. Leslie MacAvoy, “Suffering and Redemption: A Nietzschean Analysis of The Tree of [11n
Life,” in ed. Beever and Cisney, The Way of Nature and the Way of Grace: Philosophical
Footholds on Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, 198.
35. Peter Travers, review of Knight of Cups, Rolling Stone, March 2, 2016. https:// [11n
www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-reviews/knight-of-cups-91815. Accessed July 2, 2019.
36. Matt Zoller Seitz, review of Knight of Cups, RogerEbert.com, March 4, 2016. https:// [11n
www.rogerebert.com/reviews/knight-of-cups-2016. Accessed July 2, 2019.
37. I do not mean to suggest that this has never been a theme in any of Malick’s films, [11n
naturally. But in many of his other films, the question of selfhood is secondary to some larger
philosophical question driving the project. In The Thin Red Line (1998), for instance, the
question is, “What’s this war in the heart of nature?”, while in The Tree of Life, the question is,
“How did she bear it?” It is only in Knight of Cups that the question of selfhood takes center
stage.
38. David Davies, “Vision, Touch, and Embodiment in The Thin Red Line,” in ed. Davies, [11n
The Thin Red Line, 54.
39. Knight of Cups, dir. Terrence Malick (Los Angeles: Broad Green Pictures, 2016). John [11n
Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress: Norton Critical Edition, ed. Cynthia Wall (New York and
London: Norton, 2009), 3. Note: page 3 of the Norton edition reproduces the title page for the
Second part, erroneously referring to it as the first. The second part chronicles the journey of
Christian’s wife and child. The wording of Malick’s opening is a verbatim quotation from the
title page of the First part.
40. Cynthia Wall, “Preface,” in Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, xiv. The Pilgrim’s [11n
Progress has for over a century been widely considered the “first” novel in the English lan-
guage: “In this sense Defoe is properly called ‘the father of the modern English novel,’ but the
title is more native to Bunyan, who first essayed to analyse character, and to depict the work-
ings of heart and conscience.”; Charles James Billson, “The English Novel,” in The Westmin-
ster Review, Vol. 138 (July–December 1892), 602-620; 610.
 T The Gifts of Death

41] 41. W. R. Owens, “Introduction,” in John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Oxford World
Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), xx.
42] 42. Lloyd Michaels, Terrence Malick: Contemporary Film Directors (Urbana and Chicago:
University of Illinois Press, 2009), 70.
43] 43. Knight of Cups, 2015.
44] 44. Ibid.
45] 45. Ibid.
46] 46. Ibid.
47] 47. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 56–57.
48] 48. Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, trans. Howard Hong and Edna Hong (New York:
HarperCollins, 1962), 68.
49] 49. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 231.
50] 50. Ed. Friedrich Roth, Hamann’s Schriften, Teil 3 (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1821–1843), 151,
224. This is a constant refrain in Kierkegaard’s notes and letters, and it even serves as a
epigraph in one part of Kierkegaard’s Stages on Life’s Way. Søren Kierkegaard, Stages on
Life’s Way, Kierkegaard’s Writings, Vol. XI, ed., trans. Howard Hong and Edna Hong, (Prince-
ton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 194.

37] REFERENCES

38] Armstrong, Karen. The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism. New York: Random
House, 2000.
39] Beever, Jonathan and Vernon W. Cisney, Ed. The Way of Nature and the Way of Grace:
Philosophical Footholds on Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 2016.
40] Billson, Charles James. “The English Novel.” The Westminster Review. Vol. 138.
July–December 1892, 602–620.
41] Bunyan, John. The Pilgrim’s Progress: Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Cynthia Wall. New York
and London: Norton, 2009.
42] ———. The Pilgrim’s Progress, Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
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43] Carlisle, Clare. Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling: A Reader’s Guide. London and New York:
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44] Cronin, Kevin M. Kenosis: Emptying Self and the Path of Christian Service. New York:
Continuum, 1992.
45] Davies, David, Ed. The Thin Red Line. London and New York: Routledge, 2009.
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McReynolds Oddo. Trans. Constance Garnett. Rev. Ralph E. Matlaw and Susan McRey-
nolds Oddo. New York and London: Norton, 2011.
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54] Roth, Friedrich, Ed. Hamann’s Schriften, Teil 3. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1821–43.
55] The Tree of Life. Directed by Terrence Malick. Los Angeles: Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2011.