Movie Review: Knowing (2009) directed by Alex Proyas
The time is 2009. MIT astrophysics professor John Koestler (Nicolas Cage) is trying to raise his son Caleb (Chandler Canterbury), who has an auditory processing disorder that his hearing aid helps with, after the tragic death of his wife the previous year. As a result of his grief, John has adopted a nihilistic viewpoint that the universe is entirely random, and nothing has an actual purpose outside itself. (As a good teacher, he’s quick to point out that this is his philosophical viewpoint, and not an objective fact.) This has caused him to become estranged from his preacher father (Alan Hopgood) and barely on speaking terms with his sister Grace (Nadia Townsend). His colleague from the Cosmology department Phil Beckman (Ben Mendelsohn) is trying to hook John up with an attractive acquaintance of theirs, but John’s become something of a helicopter parent to Caleb and keeps canceling.
As it happens, Caleb’s school, William Dawes Elementary, is having its fiftieth anniversary. At a ceremony honoring this, a time capsule with students’ drawings from 1959 imagining the far future year of 2009 ia unearthed. Caleb is given the envelope containing the entry of Lucinda (Lara Robinson), who printed out a sequence of apparently random numbers. This is baffling, but later that evening, a seeming coincidence causes John to realize that it’s actually the dates and fatality lists of various disasters that were in the future at the time the list was created. (Later on, seemingly “junk” numbers turn out to be location markers.) The numbers are too exact to be random, and three of the dates are still in the future.
Now John must find some way of proving the list is genuine, and attempt to stop the coming disasters! This is not helped by the mysterious Whisper Man (D.G. Maloney) who keeps approaching Caleb, or that Lucinda has since died, and her long-suffering daughter Diana (Rose Byrne) doesn’t want to open that wound, despite her daughter Abby (Lara Robinson) making a quick connection with Caleb.
This science fiction disaster movie is haunted by 9/11, which is specifically called out. Not so much because of the terrorism thing, but because American culture was still trying to process what it “meant”; something that would have happened anyway, or something that could have been prevented if only the right people had known?
Good: Some awesome disaster scenes. Especially the first two disasters go the extra mile. Lara Robison is quite good in her double role. Nicolas Cage as always does a good job of seeming unhinged enough that he’s undercutting his own attempts at convincing people. The scene with elderly teacher Miss Taylor (Alethea McGrath) is effective.
Less good: Since the universe is deterministic in this story, all of John’s actions are ultimately pointless, as is the prophetic set of numbers. Nothing can be changed, the future is set in stone, and John just as well could have stayed home and slept through the events without that being an issue. (Except that he can’t because his actions are also predetermined.) The Whisper Men’s plans also make near zero sense, but apparently they are (despite knowing the future) trapped into doing exactly the things they end up doing. This makes the movie bleak and miserable. Some viewers may question why they spent two hours of their life on this story.
Content note: People and animals burn to death. Other gory deaths. Children in peril. John has a bit of a drinking problem, though he is easily able to stop drinking alcohol once there’s something more important to do.
It’s certainly an interesting movie, and I would recommend it to people who are okay with bleakness.
