Knowing - Some Commentary

Warning - spoilers all the way throughout this commentary.

I'd heard much about Knowing, but didn't have a chance to catch it at the cinema. So, it was with some trepidation that I got the film 'on demand' from the cable provider. I was not at this stage 'Knowing' (ha ha) what to expect so approached it with a fairly open mind. What followed was worth watching, save for the final 20 minutes or so. Argh.

Knowing tells the story of a time capsule created fifty years ago, that's opened in 'modern day'. Nicholas Cage is a father and an MIT worker, who manages to get hold of a paper from the time capsule with numbers on it. He decodes the number sequences, realising that they relate to disasters and incidents that are going to happen. Unfortunately, the final sequence (discovered close to the end of the film) is the end of the world.

Angels or aliens - probably depends on your own belief system - become involved and it is apparent that these beings are responsible for the code produced and that they effectively spirit children away to a new 'eden'. This of course leaves the end of the world to occur as a solar flare blasts the planet. A most pessimistic (and unusual) Hollywood ending.

Whatever these beings are meant to be in the film, their presence is uniquely sinister, unhelpful and generally disturbing. Cage goes from a religio-sceptic through to a believer by the film, though I'm still not sure I understand his journey from the first watch. He's also blasted off the planet along with everyone else.

So, aliens or angels or whatever knew the world was coming, but did little or nothing to help, electing instead to send a bunch of kids out to pasture on a new world with what looked like a tree of life and a garden of eden? Oh please. Exactly how will they survive? A few posts on the IMDB message boards suggested they could be vegetarian and eat fruit etc - well, just how many kids know which berries are toxic for example? Oh how to manage agrocultural land to produce crops? Give me a break. Might be a step too far, but maybe those sinister alien chaps will help out?

End of the world films aren't usually my bag, as quite often they are stuffed to the gills with huge special effects, little story and dodgy acting. This film started out differently but was so high concept by the end that I was left utterly annoyed. If the aliens were so powerful, why didn't they help out with some solar shielding technology? Or, was that not possible? I might be wrong of course, but I also read that on a science journal a solar flare wouldn't have the effect shown here. Whatever. Either way, this film started out very interestingly and was in the end ruined by a high concept idea that seemed ill-thought through. Like the worst kind of haute cuisine, it failed to satisfy on any kind of meaningful level, yet promised so much at the start.