Knowing is an American sci-fi thriller released in 2009. Since then, it has been rightfully considered one of the amazing films of the time, as it managed to really and lastingly make a big impression on viewers and critics, primarily due to its frightening mystery almost to the last frame, addictive tension, and, when necessary, adequate validity. happening on the screen.
The main emotional driver for much of Knowing is paranoia. The grown-up and hard-lived man and woman know that something terrible is happening, and the tension comes from their both desperate and reluctant desire to get more information.
The merit of the director and screenwriter is expressed in the fact that they were able to show the only honest way to end the impressive idea of the film is to show something on the scale of their deepest fears.
What is the movie Knowing about
In the yard in 1959, Massachusetts, the provincial town of Lexington, the local elementary school named after William Dawes. On the playground, Lucinda Embry can be seen looking into the distance. It seems that she is going through something terribly painful. Her gaze is followed by a whisper in the background. As soon as recess ends, Miss Taylor, Lucinda’s teacher, constantly tells her to return to class.
After that, as part of a class hour, Ms. Taylor invites students to draw a picture of what they think the future will look like, and then put the resulting drawings into a time capsule.
After they start painting, Lucinda appears to be in a daze. Moreover, she frantically scribbles numbers on a piece of paper. It seems that the same unidentified voices guide Lucinda’s thoughts and actions.
The film then moves forward fifty years later. There is a solemn opening of the same time capsule.
Then widower John Koestler, who is a professor at the most prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a famous astrophysicist, discovers that an old sheet of paper from a time capsule, covered with numbers predicting various tragedies and natural disasters, fell into his hands.
Having guessed its purpose, Koestler makes an attempt to stop the tragedies that have not yet occurred on the list. As the mystery of the numbers unfolds, John learns that not only can he not stop the final event, but that it will wipe out all human life on the planet. In the film’s shocking ending, he entrusts the care of his son to strange alien figures, sending him to the stars before Earth is engulfed in a deadly solar flare.
But before the most memorable and terrifying thing happens, Koestler tries to protect his son Caleb from humanity’s impending extinction. To make matters worse, the sinister people, or, as Caleb himself called them, the “whisperers,” pursue the boy throughout the film, and end up suddenly being aliens responsible for a prophetic chain of numbers that leads to the place where these very aliens take innocent children with you.
It is this epic plot twist that sees John, along with the rest of humanity, doomed to die on Earth, while his son, along with another chosen girl, Abby, is sent to survive among the stars with apparently well-meaning aliens.
The meaning of the movie Knowing
Upon closer inspection, John realizes that Lucinda’s numbers are dates and death tolls. In addition, the geographical coordinates of major natural disasters over the past fifty years are given. Among them, three more are to come. After the three final events, John faces two of them personally. The first was a plane crash, and the second was a train collision in New York. This leads John to believe that his family may have been involved in these events, as one of the events caused his wife’s death. As for Lucinda’s message, Caleb was the one who got it. Meanwhile, Caleb begins to hear whispers in the same way that Lucinda does.
The children in Knowing are central to why some still want the meaning to be explained. It seems strange that an alien race decided to save Caleb and Abby and raise two strange human children, but this was done so that the reborn humanity could start over.
The “whispers” of the aliens are a form of selection, and only a select few get a ticket off the planet. Since the aliens refuse to take the adults, it seems that they specifically want children who have not yet known great sin to restore humanity.
Obviously, there is a deeper meaning to all this. Inevitably, there are countless different ways to interpret the aliens, their communications, the solar flare, and the new planet, so no single explanation can be “correct.”
ending explained Knowing
First of all, in the very ending, viewers watch hundreds of other ships also leave the Earth. This proves that thousands of children are being saved from all over the world. Afterwards, John cries in hysterics and falls to the ground.
The next morning, John is awakened by a light drizzle and a strange orange glow in the sky caused by solar flares. The viewer sees how he drives through the ruined city. Buildings are on fire, temperatures are rising, and panic-stricken people are running through the streets, carrying whatever they can carry.
John then returns home and is hugged by Grace. He informs her that Caleb has been taken care of. Koestler further reminded him that this was not the end. The last solar flare incinerates them as they hold on to each other. It destroys the whole city. The last image of the Earth comes from space at the moment of its disintegration.
What follows is a scene that appears to be part of a distant planet. Despite its strange colors, the planet is teeming with plants. The spaceship drops two young children, the same Caleb and Abby, on the surface along with their rabbits. Then other ships land there, land and drop off the children. Finally, Caleb and Abby run towards an impressive glowing tree in the distance. It becomes apparent that the children have landed in a safe place.
A possible reason for the selection of children is most likely a matter of age. Children of Caleb and Abby’s age could survive being separated from their parents, and they are young enough to give them enough time to recover and adjust to Earth’s destruction. This, in fact, ensures a smoother transition into their role as the first representatives of the new society.
One of the most confusing aspects of the Knowingending is how Caleb and Abby are shown holding rabbits shortly before leaving with the aliens. The film does not explicitly say this, but it is seen how the rabbits arrive safely on an alien planet with their children in the last minutes of the life of their native planet.
A more logical explanation for the rabbit’s inclusion in the new world may be largely symbolic – especially because of the animal’s reputation for breeding quickly or for their regular use in scientific experiments.
On the other hand, it is possible that rabbits are meant to help the new civilization of children by establishing the food chain. Since the aliens have been taking children from different places around the planet, it is likely that they have also taken various types of animals, most likely to make sure the children can grow up with a reliable source of food. Or perhaps it had a Noah’s Ark-like purpose when refugee children from Earth took two animals of different species with them to save and repopulate not only humanity, but Earth’s animal species as well.
In general, The Sign draws a lot of biblical inspiration, especially in the way it treats the idea of prophecy and apocalypse. While it’s certainly not the first sci-fi movie to touch on biblical symbolism, The Sign actually explores a wide range of religious themes. The most obvious is the film’s use of prophecy, which is reinforced by the connection between John Koestler, who is trying to warn the planet of the coming apocalypse, and the Apostle John, author of the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Christian Bible that details the end of the world. In addition, John’s son Caleb also bears his name in honor of the biblical character.
Perhaps to say that Knowing is a layered film is to give it too much credit, but it certainly has a lot of themes and inspirations involved, and that ultimately makes its ending a bit confusing.
By including so much religious allegory, Knowing actually sets its own ending relatively early, foreshadowing the death of Nicolas Cage’s character and spiritual redemption. However, the religious symbolism also lends itself to another interpretation of the ending: the aliens in the film are actually peculiar angels.
