Film Theory
Knowing: A Spiritual Mind-Bending Movie to Watch This Weekend
“What good is knowing if there’s nothing to do about it?”
Knowing (2009) is a blend of spiritual sci-fi, disaster, and tragic endings. It features a buried time capsule, numbers, black obsidian protection crystals, aliens who turn into glowing angels, clairaudience, a massive crystal-like-looking spaceship, prophecies, and tragic endings.
The story opens in 1959 in a school when a time capsule is innocently stocked with how children predict the future would be like in 50 years and placed in the ground. The children are excited about this assignment, except for one kid. She's weird and hears voices. She looks terrified.
While the normal kids were drawing pictures of rockets and robots, the girl writes down a page full of numbers. Numbers that seemed meaningless. Time is up and the teacher starts collecting the work of every kid, but the weird kid still isn’t done and is frantically scribbling down numbers. Her paper is taken away and placed in the time capsule with those of the other kids.
The time capsule is buried in a ceremony to be removed 50 years later.
The girl goes missing after the ceremony only to be found later in a closet, scratching more numbers with her fingers until they bled. Her teacher looks at her with terror.
The time capsule is forgotten, and everybody goes on with their life. Fifty years later in the year 2009, John Koestler, a science teacher played by Nicolas Cage, is teaching his class about space and the solar system. He talks about the subject of randomness and determinism.
Determinism says occurrences in nature are causally decided by preceding events or natural laws and that everything that has happened up until this point is for a reason.
Everything has a purpose, an order to be determined.
Randomness says that it’s all simply a coincidence and the very fact that we exist is nothing but a result of a string of chemical accidents and biological mutations and there is no grand meaning.
“There’s no purpose,” says Koestler depressingly.
Koestler didn’t know what to believe. He had lost his wife and wasn’t even sure heaven existed, which Caleb, his son, was certain is where his mom is.
Caleb goes to the same school where the kids buried the time capsule. It was time for the capsule to come up. The capsule is pulled from the ground and every kid takes a paper to see what the kids from 50 years ago taught the future would be now. Koestler was there for the ceremony. Caleb ends up with the paper with the numbers written by the weird kid. He knows it means something and therefore takes the paper home with him.
At home, Koestler notices his son brought the paper home and takes it away from him to be returned to the school.
Being a science teacher, Koestler is drawn to the numbers. What could it mean? He stays up all night doing research and what he finds out is terrifying.
The numbers relate to every single disaster that has happened 50 years since the paper was buried beginning with the 9/11 event. He couldn’t believe it. He tells his best friend who assumes he’s just so depressed, he’s losing his mind. He calls it synchronicity.
Koestler doesn’t give up. He keeps on researching and discovers that three disasters haven’t happened yet and are about to happen, but no one believes him. It wasn’t surprising as no one ever believes the weirdo who knows things. They are labeled crazy, weird, or simply too depressed to know what they talk about.
In other news, the country is going through a heatwave that has left everybody uncomfortable. Koestler later realizes that one of the numbers was actually a date where a solar flare will wipe everything off the surface of the earth. He does everything he can to stop it from happening but it’s already written to happen 50 years ago.
While knowing that earth was about to be destroyed, some pale-looking people — the whisper people — who are now whispering into Caleb’s head arrive on earth to take two souls who will keep humanity from going extinct. They were either aliens or angels.
One of the souls they chose was Caleb, and the other was a little girl the same age as Caleb, who also heard the whispers. They were supposedly the chosen ones because they heard the call.
Koestler was not chosen. No matter what he did, and despite knowing this prophecy, he couldn’t change the end of the world from happening.
The film ends with the two kids being led into a massive spaceship that will leave your jaw dropped and your mind blown. Later there’s total annihilation of Earth.
While the ending of this movie was tragic, it was overall a great movie. It’s a good movie for someone in the questioning stage of their spiritual awakening who may be searching for answers and purpose. While the movie itself does not provide answers and will probably leave you in deep thought, it’s very interesting.
It’s a mind-bending mix of science, religion, and spirituality and keeps you at the edge of your seat.
I believe all movies were made to reflect some reality and meaning and you can find that when you remain open-minded to finding them. The movie shows that knowing things doesn’t automatically save you. As Koestler said at some point in the movie, “What good is knowing if there’s nothing to do about it?”