Terrence Malick dips into the Gnostic Acts of Thomas

Christian Bale has already played Moses and Jesus. Might he now be playing the apostle Thomas as well?

Not literally, of course. Well, I assume not. But this week a trailer and synopsis were released for Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups, which stars Bale, and the synopsis at least seems to hark back to an apocryphal text called the Acts of Thomas.

Here is what the synopsis says (“Rick” is the Bale character):

Once there was a young prince whose father, the king of the East, sent him down into Egypt to find a pearl. But when the prince arrived, the people poured him a cup. Drinking it, he forgot he was the son of a king, forgot about the pearl and fell into a deep sleep. Rick’s father used to read this story to him as a boy. The road to the East stretches out before him. Will he set forth?

This is what Wikipedia says about ‘The Hymn of the Pearl’ from the Acts of Thomas:

The hymn tells the story of a boy, “the son of the king of kings”, who is sent to Egypt to retrieve a pearl from a serpent. During the quest, he is seduced by Egyptians and forgets his origin and his family. However, a letter is sent from the king of kings to remind him of his past. When the boy receives the letter, he remembers his mission, retrieves the pearl and returns. That the boy is implicitly Thomas rather than Jesus is indicated by the eventual assertion that he is next in line to his elder brother, this unnamed brother not otherwise mentioned in the text.

Here is the trailer for the film:

Knight of Cups is the second collaboration between Malick and Bale, following The New World nine years ago. I spoke to Bale on the junket for that film; you can read my junket report here and some extra quotes from those interviews here.

Thanks to reader “KENNYS” for the tip.