Or has aspects of each anyway: the director who's lost his way, the journalist who's lost his soul.

“Knight of Cups” is apparently a Tarot card. From Wiki the wicked:

If the card is upright, it represents change and new excitements, particularly of a romantic nature. It can mean invitations, opportunities, and offers. The Knight of Cups is a person who is a bringer of ideas, opportunities and offers. He is constantly bored, and in constant need of stimulation, but also artistic and refined. He represents a person who is amiable, intelligent, and full of high principles, but a dreamer who can be easily persuaded or discouraged.

Reversed, the card represents unreliability and recklessness. It indicates fraud, false promises and trickery. It represents a person who has trouble discerning when and where the truth ends and lies begin. 

One assumes the creative one is Malick, easily persuaded, easily made unreliable and reckless, by Hollywood in the ... ‘70s? “Let me tell you about you” means “I’ll make you the you I think you are, while you lose you in the process.”

Of course, we all lose you in the process, don't we?

But thank God for the conflict. Otherwise it looks too much like “To the Wonder,” and that's Malick's weakest film. Bale is Affleck (Batman bros), and Portman, Poots and Blanchett are some combination of Kurylenko and McAdams.

Another concern: No script. It was all improvised. Malick is disappearing down the hole of his own creativity and he's either going to bring back something amazing, or drown.

Sheets again, too. They‘re replacing wheat. 

“All of those years ... living the life of someone ... I didn’t even know.”