Now, there’s a suggestive title, I think …
I hope …
It’s a Saturday, again, which long time readers will realise means a movie.
And joining me and Adrian, tonight, were Kevin, and his wife, Sarah.
Tonight’s film?
Was the Alex Proyas* directed, Nicholas Cage film, “Knowing.”
Which I know got something of a mixed reception from the critics, on its theatrical and DVD release, but was one I found rather enjoyable.
And worth watching, as well, although it’s not the fun flick that, for example, “The Strangers” was.
“Knowing” has something of a more serious not to it.
It is about the end of the world as we know it, after all …
Nicholas Cage plays widower, John Koestler, an MIT professor of Astrophysics, whose son, Caleb, is given a list of numbers from a time capsule, buried at his school some fifty years earlier.
One that seemingly predicts every major disaster in the following decades; including 9/11, and a seriously nasty incident on the New York subway system.
The list of numbers comes complete with death tolls and map references.
The Nick Cage character actually finds himself at a first, and trying to prevent a second.
The third one, of course, is the one that sees Earth destroyed.
And not in a preventable, “Klaatu Barada Nikto” way, either.
Which is where I’m thinking Knowing is pop philosophy that’ll keep us all happily discussing in the metaphorical pub for hours.
You see, the second incident I mentioned — the one that Cage’s character tries to prevent — sees him chasing after a man he assumes is a terrorist, about to bomb the train.
It turns out the man is a shoplifter who’s running from what he thinks is a policeman.
Shades of Jean Charles de Menezes, there, I thought.
We, the viewers, are momentarily left thinking that the numbers prophecy is wrong; or at least, allows Cage to prevent the disaster.
Until an on-coming train crashes …
Which I think is what’ll get those of us with an inkling for these things talking.
After all, what exactly is the nature of prophecy? Is the future fixed? Can we change it? Or escape what fate has in store, once whatever Higher Power we may believe in has marked us for it?
You know, I don’t know if that’s something I’m qualified to say, one way, or the other …
But I do know people trying to wriggle away from their ordained fates are major themes in some of Michæl Moorcock’s works, and in Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens.
Actually, I’m also fairly convinced it’ll be a film that will appeal to both believers and non-believers, alike. I know Adrian is more secular than I, and I think Kevin ad Sarah are — from what they’ve said, over the years — are split on similar lines.
Because, for me, Knowing had a definite religious feel to it, although not the messiah overtones of Dune or The Matrix trilogy.
Oh, no.
This was more the doomier feel of Revelations, or Ezekiel, I thought. Terrifying stuff, if your in the wrong frame of mind, with their talk of End times, and Cherubim, and wheels with-in wheels.
And of those chosen to be taken to heaven.
Which is where the film ends.
It sees Caleb, John Koestler’s son, and Abby, the granddaughter of the school girl who made the original prophecies, literally ascending to heaven, and left to start a new life — as a new Adam and Eve, if you will — on something that could be a new garden of Eden …
Or an alien world …
Who knows … ?
I’m not sure …
But I do know Knowing is worth watching …
If for no other reason, in presenting us with a very science fictional Last Days, it allows us a comfortable way to discuss these things.
* Hmmm … Now I liked this effort of his … NOT how I felt about his take on “I, Robot”, though … !
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