Beware the solar flare

Rating: Null/10 (30 August 2009)

Alex Proyas plunges further into mediocrity with "Knowing", a film that pretends to be science fiction but is really a slice of Christian evangelism.
Nicholas Cage plays John Koestler, a professor who has recently lost his wife in a car accident. Because of this tragic event, John no longer believes in God; the universe is vile and uncaring, he muses. Koestler's son Caleb, however, refuses to adopt this atheistic belief, and believes instead that his mother is alive and well in "heaven". Caleb's refusal to "listen" to his father's beliefs is symbolised by his partial deafness and his need to wear a hearing aid. Equally heavy-handed is the fact that this hearing aid allows the kid to receive messages from God-like alien beings called the Whisperers. In other words, the kid is deaf to the sacrilegious ways of mortal man, but attentive to the teachings of God.
More subtle are the names of the two central characters. Caleb, of course, is named after a famous character in the Hebrew Bible, a figure noted for his steadfast faith in God when the Hebrews refused to enter the promised land of Canaan. In ancient languages the name Caleb itself means "Servant of the Lord". In contrast, Nicholas Cage's character (John Koestler) seems to have been named after Arthur Koestler, author of "The Roots of Coincidence", one of the first books to deal seriously with synchronicity, a concept that Cage's character wrestles with in the film.
"Knowing" ends with the news that a solar flare will destroy all surface life on earth. Because they don't wish for all life to perish, the Whisperers, who resemble angelic beings, send down spaceships to "save" those "chosen few" who can "hear their voices". These "chosen ones" are taken up to a new planet which resembles a heavenly utopia. Here they roam about this hokey landscape, playing in the grass and frolicking with white rabbits. Proyas perhaps intends to imply that this new race of "saved ones" will go forth and multiply like rabid rabbits, but the effect is more humorous than profound.
Meanwhile John, denied entry into heaven, remains on earth. With the solar flare approaching, Earth turns into a literal Hell, flames everywhere, buildings on fire and the skies boiling red. Proyas even goes so far as to throw in brief shots of scantily dressed civilians partying and running about like morons, Earth now becoming some kind of catchment area for the hedonistic, orgy loving, pseudo satanic MTV generation. It's all quite stupid.
So what we basically have here is a retelling of the apocalyptic events prophesied in the New Testament book of Revelations. Armageddon becomes a solar flare, faith in God becomes "the knowing", Whisperers become angels, white doves become white rabbits and Nicholas Cage becomes an atheist whilst his kid becomes a child of God who is saved from judgement by his steadfast belief in an odd blend of Christianity and New Age pseudo-scientific mysticism. There are also allusions to the "white stone" and "new names" prophesied in Revelations, though here they become mysterious black pebbles.
Ignoring the silly religious tone of the picture, the film fails to work as a conventional thriller. Proyas demonstrated that he is incapable of using CGI in "I, Robot" and here his FX work is equally ridiculous. A dream sequence features silly CGI animals, a plane crash looks wholly fake, a subway disaster looks like a poor imitations of a similar sequence in "Speed" and the final act "apocalypse" and "heaven" sequences look like cheesy outtakes from Keanu Reeves' "Constantine".
A far better film which tackles a similar message (ie - a wholly regressive message) is M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs". Shyamalan, himself a Christian, tells virtually the same story, only he refuses to use CGI and is a bit more restrained. Whatever his limitations, Shyamalan knows the power of imagination. More importantly, he knows that some things just cannot be rendered effectively on screen. Afterall, how can one imagine the unimaginable? How can one communicate, conceive and concretize something that is unknown, unknowable and inconceivable? In film, those who attempt to literalize these things tend to immediately render them trite. It is this lazy need to communicate everything directly with CGI, from the hokey heaven sequence at the end of "Knowing", to the revelation of the aliens at the end of "War of the Worlds", to the flying bubbles of "The Fountain", to the hellish landscapes of "Constantine", that often sabotages these "high concept" modern scifi flicks. Incidentally, "Knowing's" screenplay was written by Stuart Hazeldine, whose first short film was titled "Christian
5/10 – A cross between "Final Destination", "Signs" and "ET", with a sprinkle of the same hokey new age mysticism of "Close Encounters", "Knowing" works best in its first act. The film contains one great sequence in which a child sleeps at night whilst "aliens" watch over him.