The Apocalyptic 2009 Science Fiction Melodrama Knowing is Bonkers in the Best Possible Way
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A young Nicolas Cage came tantalizingly close to playing the lead role of a musician who receives the unfortunate news that the world is coming to a premature end and must figure out how to live with his impending death and the world’s end in Steve Ja Jarnett’s 1988 cult classic Miracle Mile.
The timing, alas, did not work out and Anthony Edwards ended up playing the role instead. The Top Gun star made for a perfectly serviceable lead but it seems safe to assume that the apocalyptic drama would have been even better with Cage as the lead and starring in Miracle Mile would have improved Cage’s already thriving career.
Twenty-one years after Miracle Mile hit theaters with a Revenge of the Nerds alum in the lead instead of a future Oscar winner Cage finally got a chance to play a man who receives the unfortunate news of the world’s imminent demise and must figure out how to live with his impending death and the world’s end in Alex Proyas’ hypnotic apocalyptic melodrama Knowing.
The two films are simultaneously very different and strangely simpatico. Thematically they overlap in ways that border on uncanny but their scope and ambition deviate wildly.
Miracle Mile offers an intimate exploration of a global apocalypse, one that focuses on people and emotions and fate. It was charmingly, ingratiatingly micro whereas Knowing is unabashedly macro, a bold vision of end times realized through artful CGI and impressive special effects.
Knowing and Miracle Mile are fundamentally complementary. They’d make for a terrific if at least moderately depressing double feature because of all the death and destruction and whatnot.
The third film of the decade to cast Cage as a wiz at cracking codes and figuring out puzzles after National Treasure and its sequel as well as the second film in three years to cast him as a man who can predict the future (after Next), Knowing typecasts the Face/Off star as MIT professor John Koestler.
The widower’s life changes forever when his spooky son Caleb ( Chandler Canterbury, whose name sounds like a character in a Wes Anderson movie) brings home a piece of paper containing a dense series of number written by Lucinda Embry (Lara Robinson), a creepy little girl blessed and cursed with special powers from a time capsule buried in 1959.
The intense academic discovers that the weird historical artifact his son irresponsibly brought home is a work of prophecy that predicts a series of major disasters, including the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
I’ve seen Knowing before and remember being impressed and shocked at some of the places it goes thematically and narratively, by its brass iron balls and lunatic ambition. Yet I had somehow forgotten that Knowing is semi-secretly a 9/11 movie that uses a collective trauma that was still relatively fresh in the public imagination as a tasteless plot point.
I’m usually appalled when movies exploit our intense emotional and spiritual connection to 9/11 for their own cynical ends but there’s something about the film’s audacity in its treatment of 9/11 that I found oddly endearing.
Knowing’s premise falls apart if you think about it too much. For example it’s established the paper predicting the future deals only with major disasters but where makes a disaster major? Do 82 deaths constitute a major disaster? How about 47? Where do you draw the line?
Our hero begins racing about the country trying to prevent the inevitable without much success. He calls the FBI and tells them about a plane crash at a particular location that he learned about from the long-ago girls’ eerie scribbles, then hangs up and heads to the crash sight and seems surprised the agency didn’t take him seriously and dispatch all of their men and resources to his call.
Knowing was directed by The Crow and Dark City’s Alex Proyas, who maintains an atmosphere rich in portent and low on levity and puts together some extraordinary set-pieces.
I am a fan of people on fire in movies but not in real life. I think it’s absolutely terrible when someone burns to death in this sick, sad, unknowable world. But when I see a stuntman on fire for more than a couple of seconds my inner child pumps his fist and chants, “Burn, motherfucker! Burn motherfucker!”
The plane crash sequence features men on fire of great quality and quantity. It’s a waking nightmare of fiery destruction and horrific death that at one point features Cage’s modern day Nostradamus shouting “Hey! Hey!” at a dude on fire.
I don’t know what I personally would say to someone in the process of burning to death but I’d like to think it’d be a little more eloquent and substantive.
Stuntmen playing plane crash victims aren’t the only ones on fire. The whole goddamn world is on fire. It just doesn’t know it yet. The inhabitants of planet earth are oblivious to its impending doom while our protagonist is traumatized by his unholy knowledge concerning armageddon.
John joins forces with Diana (Rose Byrne), Lucinda Embry’s daughter and the mother of Abby (Robinson in a dual role) in a desperate attempt to save the world. Meanwhile mysterious, ethereal figures at once angelic and demonic begin whispering thoughts into the minds of Caleb and Abby, children with a sacred destiny.
Are they aliens? Are they angels? Are they angels who are also aliens or aliens who are also angels? Is Knowing ultimately a secret Christian movie/ham-fisted allegory in addition to furtively being a 9/11sploitation effort?
If you’ve seen Knowing you may or may not have conclusive answers to those questions. Knowing is a disaster movie that takes itself very seriously, as does Cage’s scarily committed performance.
That should be a recipe for disaster and/or unintentional laughs but Knowing maintains a dreamlike mood throughout as it destroys our hopelessly corrupt world and envisions a new one free from sin.
Knowing may be a feature length Twilight Zone episode but that’s not inherently a bad thing. It works far better than it should because Cage makes us believe in the reality of a singularly outrageous conceit.
This is no garden variety science-fiction weirdness; it’s uniquely bonkers in its fever dream take on the apocalypse, an unexpectedly gutsy and just plain weird anomaly from an industry generally averse to taking these kinds of risks.
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