2 of 2

Along the way, Proyas, with help from Simon Duggan's brooding cinematography and Marco Beltrami's urgent music, proves himself to be a master of suspenseful, engaging and sometimes brutal cinematic technique. The remaining disasters unfold in a truly harrowing fashion: one involves a crashed plane and is depicted with a seemingly single hand-held shot that rivals anything in Children of Men, while the other puts the camera right behind the window of an out-of-control subway car as it smashes through innocent bystanders. And those, it seems, are just the warm-up acts for an even bigger catastrophe down the road.

And yet, even when Proyas takes the movie in a truly grandiose and even cosmic direction, he never loses sight of the human element—and full credit has to go to Cage (who has been known to slip into self-parody all too easily in other, ostensibly serious films) for giving his role here just the right degree of dramatic weight. A climactic scene between John and Caleb is especially devastating, as father and son confront an outcome that is, at once, both arbitrary and inevitable, both a result of their own free will and something that has been forced upon them for reasons that they simply do not understand.

Seeking answers amid the wreckage

Beyond that, there is not much that one can say about Knowing and its deeper spiritual or biblical implications without giving things away. So for now, let us simply note that the company which officially owns the copyright on this movie is called Ezekiel Films, and that one of the screenwriters is Stuart Hazeldine, a Christian who is also attached to Scott Derrickson's upcoming adaptation of Paradise Lost. (Hazeldine's name does not appear on-screen, but it is on the poster at the movie's official website.)

This is not to say that Knowing is a "Christian" film, per se; indeed, to the extent that we take the movie literally—to the extent that we experience the world within the story on its own terms, as any of the characters would experience it—we can safely say that the movie deviates in some ways from a biblical understanding of the concepts that it invokes. But like some of the more interesting parables, the film takes our expectations and rattles them around a bit, confirming some and disturbing others, and for some viewers it may be just the sort of thing that can tease us into active thought about what we believe and why.

Talk About It

1. John tells his class that there is a debate between "randomness" and "determinism." Are those the only two choices? Where does "free will" come in? Is it a form of randomness? Is it something else? Is it possible for things to be both random and deterministic?
   
   
2. John become quickly obsessed by the numbers written down by Lucinda, but his best friend doesn't believe they mean anything. At what point do you think you would have believed what John believes? How much evidence would have been enough? Not enough?
   
   
3. At one point, Diana considers the dreadful predictions made by her grandmother and asks, "What does it matter anyway? We all die in the end." How would you answer her question? Would it make a difference if you knew the moment of your death, or someone else's?
   
   
4. At another point, two characters discuss the gifts of the Spirit described in 1 Corinthians 12, including the gift of prophecy. Do the predictions made in this movie count as that sort of prophecy? Is there any analog in real-life prophecy for the "whisper people" that Lucinda and others hear? Is prophecy simply about predicting the future, or is it something else?
   
   
5. Why do the children at the school ceremony sing "This little light of mine"? How does that connect to the rest of the film? Why do you think their school had them sing that?
   
   

The Family Corner

Knowing is rated PG-13 for disaster sequences (including planes, trains and automobiles crashing into people and other vehicles), disturbing images (people and animals on fire) and brief strong language (a few four-letter words).

Photos © Copyright Summit Entertainment

© Christianity Today International. All rights reserved. Click for reprint information.

1. Plugged In
   
2. Crosswalk
   
3. Catholic News Service
   
4. Past the Popcorn

first page |  2 of 2