Knowing Clip
Oh, Mr. Alex Proyas, you’re making it tough to defend you as a good director. The Crow was a great little flick, Dark City (especially the director’s cut) is a pure masterpiece, and I, Robot, at the end of the day, was fun. Now comes Knowing, a film that tricks you and no, I don’t mean it’s twist. It tricks you into thinking you’re getting one film when it’s actually two for the price of one.
We open in 1959 where Lucinda Embry (Lara Richardson) makes a winning suggestion of a time capsule being planted in front of her new elementary school to be opened in fifty years time. All of the students in her class draw pictures of what they think the future will be like, except for Lucinda herself who scribbles down a bunch of numbers on her paper, and later the door of a closet. It’s now 2009 and time for the capsule to be opened. Lucinda’s drawing ends up in the hands of Caleb Koestler (Chandler Canterbury) who lets his father, MIT Professor John Koestler (Nicolas Cage), examine the numbers. At first John pays no mind to the paper but thanks to the power of alcohol notices that they reveal every major disaster of the last fifty years, including three which have yet to occur, the last being a global killer.
First let me get the good out of the way; Alex Proyas has vision. It’s the reason I, Robot wasn’t a total crapfest and it’s the best thing about Knowing. The man knows what works visually and isn’t afraid to try something different. As weird as it is to say, the plane crash is almost hard to watch. It’s a one-shot that follows Nicolas Cage while people burn around him and beg for help. Maybe it was the burning carcasses or people being engulfed by flames, but it’s tough to sit there and not feel a fear of flying when that scene hits.
The rest of the film unfortunately can’t hold up to the vision Proyas has laid out for it. The script has an intriguing concept but the execution is all over the place. First, we really do get two films for one as part of this is a neat little mystery-thriller about a man discovering all the natural disasters are pre-planned. The other film buried in here is a sci-fi metaphor for the Rapture and gives us a theory on what happens to us when we die. That’s all fine and the end is pretty much given away in the opening scenes, but both ideas feel out of place with each other in a complete film.
Nicolas Cage does the role we’re all accustomed to seeing him in by now, the know-it-all whiz who has to figure out some grand puzzle or has some special gift. What made this character work so well in The Rock is that Cage gave Goodspeed personality. Here (and in Next, Ghost Rider, and the second National Treasure) Cage doesn’t lend life to the character. One can’t get it out of his head that “Oh it’s Nicolas Cage once again.” He’s not a bad actor and all, but there’s nothing that would separate John Koestler from Ben Gates or Cris Johnson. The film would have been a tad better had there been a better leading man, and that’s not a slam on Cage, just the feeling that he wasn’t suited for this storyline.
Rose Byrne is in a different sport than Cage is. She apparently has a Masters Degree from The Kristen Stewart School of Boredom and it shows. She’s creeped out when Nick Cage first approaches her (and what woman wouldn’t be) but she carries that expression for fifty percent of her scenes. The other half she’s yelling hysterically when the role doesn’t ask for her to do it. Her lines need to be delivered subtly and Byrne misfires on every occasion. Her mother, Lucinda, tells her she’s going to die and honestly you want that to happen to her character midway through just because you’re so fed up with her.
It is pretty pleasing to report both the child actors in this film don’t ham it up as so many tend to do. Chandler Canterbury does a fine job playing a confused child – essentially, a drone. Sure, it’s easy, but so many child actors have messed this up before. He and Cage come off great as a father and son left behind by Cage’s dead wife. The same can be said for Lara Richardson who plays a dual role as Lucinda and as Abby Wayland. It’s ironic that their first meeting doesn’t feel as awkward and more natural than the one their parents share. Shamefully, Rose could learn a thing or two about subtlety from her on-screen daughter. Unlike her, Richardson actually feels terrified of what’s going on around her. I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing when both child actors outdo the adult leads in a picture, but that’s the truth of the matter.
Knowing has a strong vision but its interesting concept is executed by the two mini-films that inhabit it. My colleague’s wife said it best that “you could go to the bathroom midway through, come back and think you’re in a different film.” I want Proyas to be successful because Dark City shows how much talent that man truly has, and it still remains his best film. He does need to start choosing better material and not ones he elevates from complete crap to merely decent. Knowing has some good ideas and like a certain comic book film, isn’t conventional, but even its brilliant moments can’t save the film from being a train wreck as bad as the one that occurs toward its own end.
Rating: 
This film deserves at least a B. The thing is, I can’t get it out of my head. I’ve seen it three times. There are moments when I want to bump it up to an A-. Other times, I can poke a few holes in it. Still, my rating never gets lower than a B. Therefore, I think the critics mostly got this one wrong. The plot is mostly solid and the two major flaws I found could have been easily avoided. First, at the very beginning, the scene suggests that the children haven’t been exposed to the idea of a time capsule–otherwise, why would the kid ask what it is–yet Lucinda came up with the idea of drawing pictures about the future. We are lead to believe that the school voted on the best idea among the children–draw the pictures–the previous day and that the capsule will be placed underground the next day, and that the two ideas dovetailed perfectly. Clearly Lucinda could not have come up with the idea of placing the pictures in the time capsule, because for that to happen she would have had to already be exposed to the idea the a capsule was planned. If she had been exposed to the idea of the time capsule, why wouldn’t the other children? Did I miss something or is this completely incoherent? Second, the female lead happens to get an ambulance when all hell is breaking loose. We can even see fires breaking out in the distance. How likely is that? Don’t police and rescue service have something better to do when all hell is breaking loose? Granted, the public announcement was only recently made, but it still seems mundanely implausible. Also, it’s not necessary for advancing the plot. There are also four lines that stick out as weak. First, when he’s first figuring out what the numbers mean, Koestler says, “What’s going on here?” Lame. The preceding “Come on!” is believable, but the subsequent “What’s going on here?” is weak and unnecessary. Second, Koestler yells “Hey!” at a burning man. Lame. Third, Koestler’s MIT colleague says “You were there?” when he gets out of the car. Lame. Fourth, Koestler says the line about seeing the burning faces. You could blame this one on Cage’s acting, but the line itself is not great. These weak lines are not far from each other, makes me wonder if it was the same writer. Three more very minor nitpicks: First, when Koestler is figuring out the numbers, wouldn’t he at least get 9-11 right off the bat, if not 9-11-01? He didn’t need to write those dividing lines completely wrong the first time. Second, the burning moose wasn’t that great of CGI. The several animals that followed were good. Third, did Koestler really need to see his colleague and his wife in midst of chaos? It’s a big city. Granted, this is more cinematic poetry than reality, but I think it was unnecessary. We were already done with him when he was left helpless at Koestler’s desk. Other than the above, I cannot find any major flaws in the film. The editing is rather tight and all scenes are in the service of advancing the plot. There is plenty of foreshadowing and handholding here to carry you through. It’s a good film. It deserves three stars.