Half The Battle

Knowing is quite a chore for me to review. I don't like to reveal anything that hasn't already been publicly revealed in a film's advertising or some other form of publicity. This means that the things I really want to talk about, its logical inconsistencies and questionable motivations of some of its characters, all have to do with the movie's surprises. This must be what it was like to be a critic who reviewed The Empire Strikes Back and trying to write, "I absolutely loved this movie, especially the scene where you find out that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's...um...never mind." The twists and turns of Knowing aren't quite on that level, but you get the idea.

I almost skipped Knowing because most critics hated it. They found it to be unbelievable, stupid, dull and depressing. It was mainly the force of Roger Ebert's review that got me into the theater. He loved it, comparing it to one of his favorite films, Dark City which was directed by the same man who did Knowing, Alex Proyas. Yeah, I like Dark City, but when I think Alex Proyas, I think of the guy who took Asimov's classic I, Robot and turned it into a stupid Will Smith action film. Anyway, here's what Ebert said:

"Knowing" is among the best science-fiction films I've seen -- frightening, suspenseful, intelligent and, when it needs to be, rather awesome. In its very different way, it is comparable to the great "Dark City," by the same director, Alex Proyas. That film was about the hidden nature of the world men think they inhabit, and so is this one.

So, who's right, Ebert or everybody else? My opinion is a little of yes and no, both and neither, could be and WTF? Let me explain.

The movie opens in 1959 when some school kids in some Massachusetts town are preparing a time capsule to be opened 50 years in the future. This time capsule seems to be the biggest damn thing that ever happened to this town as everybody turns out and makes a day out of the official burial ceremony. All the kids are supposed to draw pictures and put them into the time capsule. Most of the kids draw rockets, ponies, rainbows and other things that make me think the purpose of this time capsule is to bore the hell out of people in the future. There's one little girl, a sad looking little thing named Lucinda Embry, who intensely writes out a series of numbers. The teacher gets flustered and takes the sheet away from her before she's done which causes her to hide herself away in a closet and literally make her fingers bloody by clawing the last numbers into the wood.

Cut to 2009. We meet MIT Astrophysics Professor John Koestler (Nicolas Cage) and his son Caleb. If I may give a tip to any movie characters out there: don't name your kid Caleb if you don't want him to have some sort of dark destiny. In this case, each kid in Caleb's class is given one of the envelopes from the time capsule. Guess which one Caleb gets? John and Caleb puzzle over the numbers for a bit until later that night when John notices that one of the number sequences 9-11-01-2996. This, of course, corresponds to the date September 11, 2001 in which 2,996 people died in the World Trade Center. He then examines the numbers more closely and finds one sequence after another that corresponds with the date of some huge disaster that occurred over the past 50 years. As discomfiting as this is, the truly disturbing part is that there are three sets of numbers at the end that correspond to future dates. No, wait, that's not the truly disturbing part. That would be that the numbers seemed to be a message to John Koestler specifically, a man who hadn't even been born when they were written.

When they open the envelope, John and Caleb also start seeing the strangers, blond men in black overcoats, always shrouded in darkness. Caleb has a hearing disorder and his hearing aid always acts up when they are near. They never make any sort of attempt to injure Caleb but they seem fixated on him.

We also meet Diana Wayland (Rose Byrne), Lucinda Embry's daughter. The insight and information she offers about her mother are what finally scares the crap out of John as the final prophecy may have something to do with the end of the world.

And...that's as far as I can go without revealing things I don't want to reveal. Did I like it? Hmm, that's actually a toughie. There were things I liked and things I didn't like. I would especially criticize the strangers, how they were written and why they did things the way they did them. I will say they were responsible for what happened to the little girl who initially wrote the numbers down in 1959 and I find it hard to believe it was necessary to subject a little girl to what turned out to be a lifetime of tortured visions. In fact, I really can't figure out why the strangers executed their plan they way they did. If I had their knowledge and resources, I'd have done it in a less dickish manner.

The movie deals with the issues of faith, religion and spirituality. John's sister is very religious and constantly offers to pray for him and yes, you do want to punch her after a while. John himself has gone full bore into atheism since the death of his wife though I get the impression he was leaning that way before that. The faithful won't mind this, though. John is the kind of atheist they love, a man who was presented by God with a burden and broke underneath it. I will say his faith is restored by the end of the film in circumstances that, I think, are the oddest possible way in which to have one's religious faith restored.

So, again, did I like the movie? I have to say yes, despite the things that bothered me. I'm glad I saw it, anyway. My thoughts have gone back to the film again and again since seeing it which makes it the very definition of "thought provoking". It's hard to believe that this week's Top 5 films contain two dark, ambitious and thought provoking science fiction films, a situation for which I assume I'll be longing this summer when the two science fiction films in the Top 5 will be Transformers 2 and the new Will Farrell version of Land of the Lost.