Upon reading Ebert's entire review of Knowing, I see he and I took a similar tack in not wanting to reveal too much, even stuff many have heard already. There were things I really wanted to say and points I really wanted to make yesterday too but couldn't. Ebert solved this by writing a separate spoiler filled review on his blog so the hell with it. If he can do it, so can I. Sure, he's a Pulitzer Prize winner and I'm some goob who blogs as a hobby but other than that, we're the same.
Just to be clear, if you have not seen Knowing and are planning on ever doing so between now and forever, stop reading now. We all good? Anyone need a beverage before we get started? Okay, here...we...go.
You know that phrase about the world ending not with a bang but a whimper? Knowing takes that and chucks it right out the damn window. When we first meet John Koestler (Nicolas Cage in one of those sad, slightly crazy performances he's so good at), he's discussing with his MIT Astrophysics class whether the universe is governed by randomness or determinism. Is everything that's ever going to happen already fixed or do we just flail about in a universe of limitless possibilities? It's an important discussion for a movie about predicting the future. John Koestler's answer to his class is, "I think shit just happens." Part of that is a reaction to the recent death of his wife. He wants to think that maybe something could have been done to prevent it. It turns out that never in the history of movies has a character been so wrong.
Whether it's through some sort of technology that literally allows them to pierce the veil of time and look forward into the future or an super advanced form of mathematics that allows them to inerrantly extrapolate future events from what is known now, a race of aliens knew in 1959 the dates and numbers of deaths that would be caused by every major disaster for the next 50 years. They broadcast this information into the head of a little girl named Lucinda Embrey who scribbled the numbers onto a piece of paper and put it into a time capsule. The aliens knew it would be opened by a boy named Caleb Koestler and that Caleb would give it to his scientist father John who would overcome his skepticism and accept its true nature. They knew that John Koestler, through his job as an astrophysics professor, would determine that the final prophecy was about a giant solar flare that the sun was going to shoot out and kill all life on Earth in less than a day.
I talked yesterday about a group of strangers and their plan. They are the aliens and their plan is to take Caleb and Abby, the daughter of Rose Byrne's character Diana Wayland and granddaughter of the little girl who made the predictions in 1959, and rescue them before the Earth is destroyed. Apparently, something in their culture kept them from just taking the kids which is why they needed to adopt the 50 year plan that eventually culminated with John in the woods giving them permission to take the kids a few hours before Earth's end.
Okay, now that I have all that out of the way, let me tell you why I think the aliens were complete and total dicks.
Oh sure, saving a couple of gradeschoolers (we see later that several pairs of kids were taken from all over the planet) in order to start the species over again is a noble and generous goal. All I could think was, "Why'd you stop there?" They knew about this damn solar flare at least 50 years beforehand, probably longer. Are you telling me they couldn't have saved more people than this or maybe even have given us technology that could have helped us evacuate at least a goodly portion of Earth's population? No explanations are given and the aliens' motives aren't even hinted at. You assume they're good and decent creatures but you never really know since they never even deign to tell us. I believe the reason for this is that one of the roles the aliens serve in this movie is to be a substitute for God.
One of the other major themes explored in this movie is faith and belief in God or, at least, something greater than yourself. John was an agnostic before his wife's death, probably due to his scientific background, and abandoned Him completely afterward. This has caused him to be estranged from his father, a former minister. Then he meets these aliens. Their powers are vast. Their thoughts are inscrutable. In the end, they require a human to exercise free will in order to do what they want to do which, ultimately, is to decide who lives and who dies.
As with God, you can't really question their plan since you don't know how or what they think. Could they have saved everyone or at least more than who they did? Was it a limitation of their abilities or a judgment call? And why did they have to subject poor Lucinda Embrey to a lifetime of depression and tortured visions? There wasn't another way to send their message? Torturing prophets is another thing God is known for, of course.
At the end, the aliens' actions restored John's faith and he was able to honestly say to his father, "I know," when his father said that they would all be together again. I couldn't help but think what an odd time it was to embrace religious faith in a God who was about to wipe out your race and everything your race ever created. In fact, these circumstances have all proven religious teachings to be wrong. The Earth itself died. Jesus didn't come back. Neither did Mohammad. Maybe the Hindus were onto something when they said the old world would die and a new one would be born, but, nah, they weren't nearly close enough.
In the end, the kids and Earth's only other survivors, a few rabbits brought along as pets, are dropped off on what I suppose is supposed to be a new Eden, an alien world with I think three moons and they run through a field to a tree with brilliantly white leaves. It's a beautiful scene. Maybe the aliens thought the children and their innocence would leave this world unspoiled by the violent and selfish ways of man and that's why no adults were brought along. I'd find that hard to believe if that's what they thought. Children can be the cruelest and most vicious creatures on the planet when they want to be. Then again, the aliens probably know exactly what's going to happen. In the end, they have to simply accept what they were offered as the aliens offered nothing else. All they can do is trust in the plan.
Oh well, love it or hate it, there aren't many movies that make me think this much about anything, much less the nature or humanity and the universe around us. That's what makes Knowing worth watching.
1 comment:
Something tells me I won't be doing two posts analyzing the hidden meanings of "Wolverine" or "Terminator: Salvation". Here's Ebert's review and his spoiler filled follow up. I didn't fully read either of these until I wrote my own stuff so, naturally, I missed stuff that he picked up on.
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