Feel Hoaxed?, Depressed?, or Like Someone Finished a Bad Movie?.. Then Read This !

Rating: 6/10 (21 June 2009)

Few times in my life I felt that I need to scream right in the movies. The "Get me out of here" symptoms attacked me this time outrageously. So let's take it step by step. It starts like a fine X File. Actually, the first 3/4 of the movie is such a solid and attractive paranormal thriller. But after that, well.. you can say totally confident that the disaster hit it BADLY!
I can't forget the climactic sequence where our dear terrestrial globe got wholly exploded!!! Psychologically speaking, I felt that the movie's makers are desperate ones, having some hard problems in their life, so they had to make a movie that ends this world, and starts sweeter and happier new one! Or maybe, on the contrary, they lead a pretty restful life, and had to destroy the world for the poor us to make some money!
Anyway, it's an excellent movie till its end. The performance was fabulous; I've never seen Cage that deep - like in the lecture scene - unless too scarcely. Though, that wasn't the right movie to experience that well, or to relish it that long. The real outstanding accomplishment ever done by this movie was its music. It's a complete enjoyment to feel how eccentric and eerie the way it carried out the events. It's so horrific at places, expressing perfectly the story's oddity and obscurity, and presaging its ominous end as well. Alex Proyas's direction, with or without the master scene of the falling plane, was catchy enough. The pre-end scenes, with hundreds of extras, are a sign of extraordinary director. In fact, movies like (Dark City - 1998) or (I, Robot - 2004) might have problems, but still Proyas's direction is a mark of proficiency, and undoubtedly one of their best points if not the best. Which leads us to (Knowing)'s WORST points.
Simply, what this movie is about? It's obviously about Knowing, no less, no more. Knowing the fact about this universe as a wholly strictly systematic entity, where there is one mighty power that controls everything and everyone; previously and impeccably. So that's why the Quran refers to God as "the Knower of the Unseen". And all what this movie says is that man can't change a bit in this completed destiny already, even if he knew beforehand what's hidden or unseen. It's a profound faith message, but expressed in a bad way I suppose!
First of all, we watched a father who couldn't stop any of the 3 disastrous prophecies. Instead, he got to believe satisfyingly in the higher power, and its wisdom, even if it predestined the death of his wife, the ultimate decampment of his son, then his own death with the rest of the world too. So we all have the incapacity of switching anything of what's written, or what God have already decided, only the capacity of searching for the truth and, as this movie shows, believing in destiny whatever the case may be. However, the movie didn't implant carefully these lovely meanings earlier or extensively, presenting to us a thriller that, at best, would make us enjoy our times with another paranormal case, while it's utterly not. That makes you feel tricked eventually, let alone give you an effective depressing feel after, causing the "Get me out of here" symptoms; as if it's a thriller with awfully unhappy end, because it sated, like any other thriller, the suspenseful atmosphere smartly, while it didn't do the same with its different high meaning.
Secondly, the reaction of Cage's father when he knows about the possibility of his town's destruction saying: "If god needed me, I'm Ready!!". This is goofy; as a suicide more than faith on one hand, and as a way to embody the conflict between science (Cage as biology teacher) and religion (the father as a priest) on the other hand.
Thirdly, minor points. I mean Cage's character finds everything so plainly and quickly to a strange extent. For instance, he merely used the internet to find ALL the accidents of the twentieth century, in FULL details! Or how he gets all the earth's longitudes and latitudes by a small device which it happens that he owns one! Moreover, the fatuous CGI that made the train vaporize the people in the subway's accident! Or the scene in which the kid is writing unconsciously another series of disasters!! How is that since the world is about detonation anyway??!! Not to mention, one naively-made scene, where the divine creatures transport the 2 children to the other land. For one thing, its imagination wasn't that different from Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and for another, I don't think that these ethereal creatures, that disguise in human bodies, got bottoms after taking off these very bodies! And finally, the movie makers' conviction about angels that choose many young Adams and Eves for a new world is beyond me.
Years from now, I know, a lot of reviews will talk and talk about how this movie was misunderstood, how it's a lost gem. But for me, it's just a try to say something great in another thriller. However, that try wasn't harmonious, satisfactory or great itself.