As I recall, most religious texts talk about the day of reckoning. Many scripts talk about chosen ones taken up into heaven(space)or celestial meeting places(spaceships) by the almighty to forewarn them, sometimes to save them from impending disaster. So why do I rant about those at 3 am as I pen a review on Hollywood’s March 09 sci-fi thriller Knowing? well’Knowing’ forced me to turn a few pages. How? Oh dear, did I pique someone’s curiosity? Here’s a very intriguing & scary story then. That’s what the movie is about-
In Lexington, Massachusetts of the 50s, a time capsule containing kid students’ impressions of the future is buried into the ground only to be opened 50 years later. A Little& very pensive looking girl Lucinda contributes a page full of numbers that occur to her in a trance . The capsule is buried & Lucinda goes missing. However the same night frantic personnel find her inside a closet in the school, her hands bleeding & her nails ripped off! Still in her trance, & with no pencil, the poor kid had continued to scratch out numbers on the wood. The tone is setup with foreboding. End of act 1.
Fast forward to present:Meet John Koestler(Nicholas Cage), professor of astrophysics at MIT who lives on the outskirts with his son Caleb. Caleb studies in the school where Lucinda was 50 years ago. Its 2009. The time capsule is opened, the drawings distributed to the current students. Caleb gets Lucinda’s paper. John sees it & stumbles across a shocking discovery. Most of the numbers written by Lucinda 50 years ago represent dates, death tolls & coordinates of every major disaster since 1959. Her numbers also suggests 3 impending disasters.While John gets psyched with this Nostradamus like finding & in vein tries to convince the authorities, Caleb is visited by mysterious figures in overcoats, who talk to him through telepathy. They even show him glimpses of a terrible future- a world on fire. Viewers get an impression those mysterymen are no ordinary men. No no. There is no reminiscence of X-files here:)
John follows the numerical predictions & witnesses one of Lucinda’s forecasts come true when a passenger plane crashes horribly amid a storm, bang next to the highway. Haunted by his discovery about the numbers, John traces back to 1959 & learns more of Lucinda and her strange ways. She’s dead at present & survived by a daughter. He meets the daughter, Diana(Rose Byrne) who is in no mood to discuss her mother. But when the next day John uses the numbers to correctly predict another disaster—a tube train accident, Diana realizes the predicament & takes her own daughter Abby, John & Caleb to Lucinda’s old home. By going thru Lucinda’s scribbles & cutouts John realizes that the 3rd disaster is actually doomsday and a mere 24 hours away!
The same evening Scientists indeed forecast a massive solar wave will hit Earth, with apocalyptic effects . John figures out Lucinda has also mentioned a shelter. But Diana insists they seek shelter in caves. She takes Abby & Caleb. As news of the disaster breaks out, chaos erupts at a gas bunk. The mysterymen drive off in Diana’s car with the kids. Diana gives chase but is killed in a road collision minutes later. At Lucinda’s trailer, John finds the children with four Strangers. The children are comfortable. It is understood the strangers are from outer space & shall take the children with them before earth is destroyed. John is taken aback when a spaceship descends from the sky. The Strangers transform into divine, translucent figures. Faith & science seem to merge in a strange yet beautifully convincing way. John convinces his son to go with them. The beings & two kids are lifted into the mother ship as it blasts away. Many such strange ships leave earth at the same time. John falls unconscious to wake up next morning on the forest floor. He returns to the city to see some destruction already befallen. As he joins his sister & parents, **the solar flare strikes earth, incinerating and destroying mankind.
The movie ends with the boy and girl being dropped off on an earth like planet-As if become Adam and Eve of a new era perhaps? The lineage of mankind would live on thru these two, thanks to the timely intervention of the smart’Gods’!
The theme of the movie transgresses the line between faith & science in a very subtle way- and that I’d say is the USP. There are those who sneer at such ideas. Let them:) In my humble opinion “knowing” is a fascinating, terse & thought provoking plot. The suspense & foreboding haunts you to the end. Cinematography and sound needs no 2nd tom-tomming. The plane crash and train derailment will give you the creeps with terrifying realistic lethality. No, this is not much of an actor’s movie-The movie itself calls the shots. Cage has done a good job as usual and he looks better(younger) than some of his appearances since 2007. Face job perhaps! I’ll grant full marks to director Alex Proyas for such an intense experience. It gets you at the end actually! Psyches you up:) hah!
I don’t know how long its gonna take to hit our screens, or why the delay! I got the disk in the neighborhood. Don’t miss it if you are the type. the duration of 121 minutes is worth your time and hard earned bucks mate!