Paternal Pareidolia (Knowing (DVD))

Member Name: plipplop

Product:	Knowing (DVD)
Date:	29/07/09 (139 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Spectacular disaster scenes, creepy and initially intriguing

Disadvantages: Loses the plot towards the end and doesn't really challenge the ideas it set out to challenge

A review of just the film, Knowing was produced in 2009 and the region 2 DVD is due to be released on August 3rd.

In 1959, a group of junior school students prepares to seal pictures inside a time capsule, destined to be opened 50 years later. One of the children, a strange girl named Lucinda, draws an apparently random but enormous string of numbers and despite some disapproval from her teacher, the drawing is included along with the others. In 2009, Caleb Koestler (now a student at the same school) is given Lucinda's letter to open and stirs the curiosity of his father, John, who finds a dreadful significance in the chain of numbers - but will he uncover the answers to the mystery before it's all too late? Danger waits in the unlikeliest of places, strange figures lurk in the darkness and John begins to think that his family will play a crucial role in the events unfolding before his eyes.....

I've got a lot of time for director Alex Proyas. Originally born in Egypt, Proyas has been directing for the best part of thirty years, but has restricted his choices enormously, resulting in a handful of notable, cultish classics. In 1994, he directed the ill-fated adaptation of The Crow (still revered by many). His gothic, brooding sci-fi thriller Dark City from 1998 still looks fresh and fantastic today, and his adaptation of I, Robot in 2004 cemented his position as a director who could do blockbusters with style. In Knowing, Proyas maintains his science-fiction preferences, in a dark and rather mysterious tale of fate, fantasy and philosophy, questioning whether everything is pre-determined or whether we can influence the outcome of our lives in every decision that we make. It's an intellectual minefield. Supporters of either view will challenge every shred of evidence presented, and there probably comes a point when the average viewer's head will ache, even if Knowing isn't quite the philosophical treat it initially purports to be.

It's an uncomfortable mixture of many things, which will take many by surprise. What was pitched in some ways as a family blockbuster has a sinister, often rather shocking edge that is sporadically genuinely frightening and the whole thing is coated in an eerie, macabre atmosphere that, early on at least, leaves the viewer feeling rather unsettled. It's the combination of things that you might normally find in a melodramatic disaster movie, alongside the elements of a more serious science-fiction tale straight out of The X Files that eventually threatens to derail the whole thing.

It's quite clear that Proyas could manage a very frightening horror film. In either dream sequence or disaster, the director finds detail that really is very unsettling, no more so than in one of the film's dramatic action pieces or as the audience witnesses the terrifying dreams being experienced by young Caleb Koestler. Whilst there are elements of Knowing that would seem more at home in a disaster movie, Proyas keeps things on a far grittier, more intimate nature that really thrusts the audience into the heart of the horror. A terrifying plane crash, for example, take the audience almost completely by surprise before launching John Koestler and the viewer into an even bigger nightmare. Later, in the midst of another terrible accident, the fragility of the human body is exposed even further, this time via means of an intriguing choice of camera angle which, without giving anything away certainly puts a new spin on things. Whatever the criticisms are of Knowing, it's hard to fault the visual effects which are absolutely outstanding from start to finish, via a dramatic and changing landscape of the most enormous scale.

Some bad casting choices and an inadequate script mean that in the characterisation, Knowing starts to come undone. Lead scientist John Koestler isn't a terribly sympathetic character and whilst Nicolas Cage (for once without a particularly ridiculous haircut) does give it his best, he's entirely out of place here. In fairness, Cage's character suffers terribly from that genre convention that nobody will believe him (even in the face of enormous evidence), which in turn makes him seem like an even bigger lunatic. John's relationship with his son Caleb (Chandler Canterbury, an average and unmemorable moppet) is strained following the death of the boy's mother but, curiously, the screen writers generally play it down, resulting in moments of cold mistrust that are suddenly thrust into emotional loyalty. It just doesn't sit well, along with other relationship issues that barely scrape any screen time. Caleb wants to be taken more seriously for all of about 1 minute, for example, and we also learn that John's relationship with his father is strained, rather conveniently adding a spiritual element to the story (the father is a pastor) in a way that felt just a little contrived. But it's the addition of Lucinda's daughter, Diana, who really messes it up. Partly a love interest and partly a distraction to John's cause, she's consistently irritating and engenders nothing but infuriation.

The storyline is heavy on suspense and intrigue and, in the tradition of all the good X Files, retains the audience's interest for a good part of the film's running time. It's largely the last third that will divide viewers into 'love' or 'hate' with the sort of conclusion that we might normally expect from the likes of M Night Shyamalan. It doesn't really *feel* like the climax that the screen writers intended, especially when considered against the earlier parts of the film. There are numerous plot holes and inconsistencies too. Strange stones have a continuous, unexplained significance throughout the story and it doesn't really sit comfortably with any interpretation of determinism. If it doesn't matter what we do, for example, then why was the eventual conclusion so dependant on a series of events that could so easily not have happened? Perhaps this is essentially the point of the whole movie, but as you settle on one conclusion, you start to find yourself drawn rather frustratingly to another.

Nonetheless, it's safe to say that this is the sort of movie that the X Files has only ever really aspired to be. It's frequently creepy and for a good proportion of the running time, you really don't know what's going to happen next. The outcome never feels assured and Proyas nicely sidesteps the convention of the disaster movie. It's still a story of several disjointed pieces, however, and rest assured that when the final credits roll, you just *know* that you'll think it could have been so much better than it was.

Summary: When your number's up....