| Review:
|
“Knowing” achieves a level of greatness so few science
fiction films ever achieve. It’s not merely an engaging
mystery--it’s a deeply thought-provoking fable that’s just
as frightening as it is intelligent, and it ultimately makes
a statement so profound that I was left completely awestruck.
I don’t often have an experience like that at the movies,
and for that, I’m indebted to director Alex Proyas and writers
Ryne Douglas Pearson, Juliet Snowden, Stiles White, and
Stewart Hazeldine. They’ve successfully crafted one of the
year’s most stimulating films, taking the audience on a
suspenseful, emotional, and ultimately (albeit unconventionally)
redemptive journey that poses interesting questions on the
nature of things. **
A movie like this could have easily placed technical
achievement over character development, and thankfully,
that didn’t happen; we care just as much about the people
as we do about the spectacular special effects. ***
The story begins in 1959, when an elementary school
class is asked to draw pictures of what the world will look
like fifty years later. What they draw will be put into
a time capsule, which will be reopened in the year 2009.
Rather than draw a picture, the quiet, disturbed Lucinda
Embry (Lara Robinson) writes out a series of numbers on
both the front and the back of a piece of paper. ***
Flash forward to the present day. We meet an MIT astrophysics
professor named John Koestler (Nicholas Cage), who teaches
his students that two theories on the nature of the universe
have been proposed. On the one side, we have the determinist
view, which states that everything happens as the result
of a predetermined--and more importantly, a predictable--sequence
of events. ***
How, for example, could the Earth be located at just
the correct distance from the sun to sustain life? On the
other side, we have the random view, which states that absolutely
nothing can be predicted, that life, the universe, and everything
happened as the result of cosmic coincidences. What exactly
does Koestler believe? Here are some clues: His wife died
some years earlier, and he’s openly stated that the existence
of Heaven can’t be proven. ***
As it so happens, John’s young son, Caleb (Chandler
Canterbury), goes to the same school that Lucinda Embry
attended fifty years earlier. The day comes when the time
capsule is unearthed and opened, and lo and behold, Caleb
gets the envelope containing the numbers Lucinda wrote.
He then takes it home, thinking the numbers might mean something.
John initially thinks nothing of it ... until he places
his wet glass of hard liquor on it and leaves a ring. ***
Was it a predetermined act or a random act that led
to a ring being formed around very specific numbers (the
significance of which I won’t reveal)? More important, was
it a predetermined act or a random act that landed Caleb
with the page of numbers in the first place? While I won’t
say what the numbers refer to (and this is in spite of the
many ads that give plenty of hints), I will say that what
John discovers changes him forever, forcing to consider
ideas he never thought he would be able to consider. ***
To describe more of the plot would do you and the film
a great disservice. Much of the story thrives on an engrossing
mystery that only gets more unsettling with every passing
scene. Visual motifs, such as shiny black pebbles, burning
landscapes, and silhouetted figures emerging from the forest
add great psychological weight. The same can be said for
a house so old and ramshackle that, under different circumstances,
it would be mistaken as being haunted. ***
It ties in wonderfully with the psychological states
of the characters inhabiting it. John is a solemn, broken
man, estranged from his father, often detached from his
son, occasionally dependent on a bottle of alcohol to drown
his sorrows. Caleb is expectedly precocious but surprisingly
fragile, always yearning for that which has been lost somewhere
along the way. For the first time in a great while, we have
a story that can actually support such characters; were
it not for the awesome nature of the final fifteen minutes,
John and Caleb would be nothing more than melodramatic clichés.
***
There are two more characters of great importance.
One is Lucinda Embry’s daughter, Diana Wayland (Rose Byrne),
who enters John’s life in a way that reaffirms the notion
that nothing happens randomly. The other is Diana’s daughter,
Abby (also played by Lara Robinson), who, like Caleb, has
been contacted by the creepy silhouetted figures, eventually
called the Whispering People. Watch John and Diana as they
search through Lucinda’s abandoned home in the middle of
the woods--the fear they express is disturbingly convincing.
***
|
