Knowing (2009)

Film review #630

Director: Alex Proyas

SYNOPSIS: A fifty year old time capsule is dug up at an elementary school, and each child gets a picture placed inside of what they think the future will look like. One child, Caleb, gets some sheets of paper filled with numbers. His Father, John, notices that the numbers correspond to the dates of disasters and how many people died. When the numbers predict upcoming disasters and the end of the world too, John must find a way to keep his son safe…

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Knowing is a 2009 sci-fi film. When a fifty-year old time capsule is dug up outside an elementary school, pupil Caleb Koestler receives a letter from inside filled with numbers. His Father, MIT Professor John Koestler, notices that the numbers correspond to the dates of disasters and the numbers killed. With similar disasters predicted in the numbers, John races against time to try and stop them. Thrown into the mix is the death of John’s wife over a year ago still hanging over him, a strained relationship with his parents, a philosophical quandary between determinism and randomness, and the end of the world. There’s a lot going on here. The problem with all this stuff floating around is that nothing really coheres into a central core of the film. There seems to be no real drive about what to do with the information contained in the numbers. Obviously John tries to stop the events from occurring…well, one, but then the film pivots to just accepting that it can’t be stopped, resulting in an ending that just really throws out any kind of mystery and intrigue and kind just…accepts fate, leading to abrupt resolutions of different aspects that aren’t particularly satisfying. I guess the main thread through the film is meant to be the relationship between John and his young son, but this never really develops in any way, alongside lead actor Nicholas Cage’s usual uneven ability to deliver emotional moments. Any time the film tries to express this relationship, it just feels very forced.

The whole philosophical debate between randomness and determinism is not explored in any great detail, and it’s barely addressed beyond the opening. The film does hit you over the head a bit with making John an MIT Professor on randomness and determinism, and it feels like there’s little room for nuance. There’s a few good scenes in here that grasp these disasters well, but it’s difficult to really link them all together. There just doesn’t seem to be anything to do or anywhere to go with these numbers beyond the fact that they have predicted things that happened. The film gives us some big disaster set pieces which have a good sense of destruction and chaos, but are let down by poor CG. The final act of the film flips the story on it’s head, and decides that the aim is not to predict and stop disasters, but to actually end the world and just accept it. This isn’t something that’s really built up in the film, and just undoes any work it put in. Having a certain amount of ambiguity with the “Whisper People” doesn’t really work either, and just what could be a grounded, serious drama and just adds nondescript aliens where they’re not needed.

Overall, Knowing doesn’t seem to know what it is or where it is going. It fails to deliver on an emotional drama between a Father and Son, and fails to impress with it’s philosophical footing on the debate between randomness and determinism. A few good scenes and moments whose impact are undone as the film loses its way towards the finale.