Director: Alex Proyas

Runtime: 120-minutes

It’s been obvious for a while now that expat Aussie director Alex Proyas has some funny ideas about the world and how we fit into it. After all, he made the gothic film The Crow, and followed it up with the fascinating Dark City and Will Smith’s adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot. This man is a deep thinker, and it seems that he wants to explore his ideas and his existence in film – more power to him, I say; especially if he can convince investors to stump up funds for a disaster film that might just be something more…

Nicolas Cage plays John Koestler, an astrophysicist estranged from his fundamentalist Christian family, and struggling to raise his young son Caleb (Chandler Canterbury) on his own. Caleb is brilliant, but troubled, and when the time capsule at his local school is opened after being buried for fifty years, Caleb’s ‘present’ from 1959 is a sheet of paper covered with numbers.

After writing himself off into a whiskey-fuelled stupor one night, John notices some strange patterns in the numbers – do they document half a century of disaster and death, and if so, what meaning do the last three sets of numbers hold for the world’s future? The answers to John’s troubling questions may just come in the form of single mother Diana (Rose Byrne) and her daughter Abby (Lara Robinson), who hears the same whispering that Caleb does. Then there are the pallid men in long coats, who hide in the shadows and leave weird signs. There’s some strange stuff going on in Massachusetts, and even John’s well-meaning best friend Phil (Ben Mendelsohn) can’t help him figure things out.

Knowing is an intriguing film, but its ideas are drowned out by an intrusive, explosive soundtrack, and a series of astonishing action sequences that are guaranteed to impress even the most blasé teenager. And it doesn’t help that Cage mumbles through wooden lips and frozen features for most of the film, or that the ordinarily excellent Mendelsohn is wasted in his role.

What’s going on in Knowing? Well, I’m not quite sure – there are some very obvious religious allegories in place here. Or am I just reading too much into the film? Perhaps this isn’t a conspiracy … perhaps it’s just a little bit of Proyaselytising.

**

TIM MILFULL

Be first to comment on this article

Write Comment
Comments are submitted for possible publication on the condition that they may be edited. Poster's IP addresses are logged.
Name:
Comment:
Code:*