Knowing is Everything, says the publicity...
" Shit Happens" states John Koestler , the character played by Nicholas Cage in the film Knowing [Directed by Alex Proyas]...a bland statement of the obvious that sometimes is proclaimed as a Universal Truth...
Knowing too much can be very disturbing ( and as a warning, if you don't want to know too much about the film, avoid reading the last paragraphs of this blog-posting... )
This Latest of Apocalyptic scenarios, one of dozens to have graced or disgraced the screen , especially since the year 2000 ( and the 2001 september 11th mediatised mini-apocalypse certainly did not put an end to our end-of-the-world fantasies, though to some it was The End ) ....may well disappoint the more exigeant of jaded film goers, or fail to satisfy the intelectually hungry who have already read philosophical treatises and elaborated for themselves prophetically meaningful doomsday scenarios of great complexity ...
But , as with many Nicolas Cage films , no one was trying to fool the viewers with any false intelectualism or with pedantic over the top : the plot and script were simple, deceptively so. The age old conflict between determinists and the proponents of absolute randomness is certainly not solved by this narrative , which , if it may fail to be Beautiful remains quietly powerful. Nor is the "World of the Unknown" unknown to Nicolas Cage , who amongst other things executive produced the very intriguing if moderately succesful television Show "The Dresden Files" , and who starred in the archeological mysteries National Treasure and National Treasure , Book of Secrets as well as other psycho and psychically inclined dramas such as Bringing out the Dead, (another Easter story from 1999).
The filming is stark and tense, and we are spared a happy ending . We are given nonetheless a message of ultimate hope, in a strange mix of pessimism and of optimistic triumphalism.
The horrible reality of death and it's inevitability , the sometimes inexplicable synchronicity's of life, the hints of pre-cognition and the mathematical beauty of the universe are neatly served up in an entertaining thriller .
Much of life is random, at least it seems to be so... and we cling to whatever semblance of structure we can---for life, in essence is about maintaining structure where there ought to be chaos : it is about fighting entropy, the eternal principle of inertia that sucks the energy out of all systemic forms.
There were some very simple images in this film..The fine line between insanity and sanity, the whispering voices that haunt the children, hinting at another reality were pleasant brain-teasers.
I must say, that as a fan of Science Fiction I was very pleased by the wonderful representation of spacecraft that the filmakers imagined--- and the visually satisfying maelstrom showed the extent to which CGI can now hyper-realise some of our worst imaginings..for none of us can imagine truly what being at ground zero of the equivalent of a 1000000 megaton explosion could be... but some of the scenes must certainly rank as amongst of the best aproximations of what the experience might be like .
I liked that this film was simple. I liked the simplicity of the emotions that it evokes. If you need answers, avoid this film. If you want to be tortured by ambiguity and ambivalence because you enjoy existential angst , go see an Ingmar Bergman film at your local Repertory cinema, or if you want something absurd and inexplicable , rather than an exposé of the Unexplained, choose a Fellini film and watch it while smoking pot.
If you want to dream a nightmare with and ending that is not too ghoulish, bitter sweet ,without being too overwhelmingly sad , this may actually be a film for you to see.
I guess this was definitely an Easter story, because it ends with bunny rabbits, symbols of eternal fertility of nature , and a tree which Is also an old symbol of resurection and also identifiable as the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil. But it is a film that can be watched anytime, as it s not limited by strictly christian symbolism.
A friend of mine at one of the local bookselling nooks ( of which the logo is, gues what : a tree , http://www.co-opbookstore.ca/index.html ) will tell any one who will listen ( and also those who refuse to ) that there is no price to awareness.Well, I am not certain that awareness and Knowing, or Being "In The Know" , for that matter, are priceless. Certainly knowing, (which implies direct experience ) something is not necessarily the same as being aware ( etymologically related to the latin fearful, to the act of seeing in greek , or of being careful in old english ) .
Being aware of the ever present possibility of an Apocalypse is not the same as knowing it is inevitable...There is a price to everything, and knowing too much could be costly to us. If we knew with certainty of the Apocalypse and of it's time, we would cease being motivated to live...most of us would simply, reduced to anomie , sit down , and cry.
or would we....???
