A work of excitement and imagination

Rating: 8/10 (22 March 2009)

According to the Mayas and the Aztecs, there have been four previous worlds and we are now in the Fifth World. Each of the prior worlds was destroyed in a cataclysm, but as one world is destroyed, another is reborn. Alex Proyas' metaphysical thriller Knowing speculates about such weighty subjects and about whether the universe unfolds randomly according to chance or deterministically according to a preconceived plan. It is an entertaining and ambitious film providing much food for thought, though perhaps it is more audacious than successful.
The film opens fifty years ago at Lexington, Massachusetts' William Dawes Elementary School. Miss Taylor (Danielle Carter) asks her students to draw a picture about what the world will look like in their imagination in fifty years, the pictures to be stored in a time capsule to be opened in 2009. One student, Lucinda Embry (Lara Robinson), a pale girl with a haunted look on her face fills her paper with seemingly random rows of numbers, much to the dismay of Miss Taylor. When the time capsule is opened fifty years later, Lucinda's paper is given to nine-year-old Caleb (Chandler Canterbury) whose father is Professor Koestler (Nicholas Cage), a hard-drinking widower whose wife died in a hotel fire only a few years ago.
Shockingly, Professor Koestler discovers that the numbers on Lucinda's paper are predictive of the dates, number of people killed, and the latitude and longitude of every major disaster occurring in the last fifty years with a harbinger of similar events to come, the final one suggesting the possibility of massive global destruction. As Physics professor, Koestler believes in the randomness of the universe, that "stuff" happens, but the unfolding events that seem to involve his son cause him to question the role fate plays in our lives, especially when Caleb is approached by other worldly creatures he calls "the whisperers" who communicate telepathically. Whether the creatures are aliens or angels is left to the viewer to decide but their main function in the film seems to be mainly to scare the bejabbers out of the audience.
Koestler enlists the help of Diana Wayland (Rose Byrne), daughter of the girl who wrote the prophecies fifty years before and her young daughter Abby (Lara Robinson) who also talks to the "whisperers" to attempt to prevent the predicted events from happening but the most he can do is stand around, pick up bodies, or shout furiously. While more thoughtful than most disaster movies, Knowing has its share of explosions, chase sequences, and assorted vehicle accidents, including a state-of-the art plane crash in an open field near Logan Airport, and an off track subway train hurtling through a tunnel at breakneck speed, but, by the end, the film moves from over-the-top frenzy to a more subtler level that brings in apocalyptic and religious themes.
Proyas must be commended for tackling important questions and he has produced a work of excitement, imagination, and some chills even though it is marred by a one-dimensional performance from Cage whose emotions range from worried concern to frantic hysteria. Credit should also be given to the studio for giving the green light to a project which will inevitably divide people because of its subject matter and because it dares to introduce an element of faith and hope into typical doomsday scenarios. Some critics have attempted to scare off viewers by waving the dreaded "New Age" flag but hopefully today's viewers are more sophisticated. After all, this is a new age, whether or not some people have gotten the message and any film that challenges us to explore ideas about life and its future on Planet Earth while providing music from Beethoven's Seventh Symphony has a lot to offer.