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Nicolas Cage’s Knowing movie was panned by most critics and viewers, primarily because of its baffling themes and seemingly over-the-top ending, but a closer look at what it is truly about suggests that it is far better than it is given credit for. Opening with an intriguing hook, Knowing sets the stage for its overarching mysteries by introducing a young girl who scribbles random numbers when asked to draw pictures of the future to put into a time capsule. The girl almost seems possessed by the numbers she etches into her time capsule letter, which makes it hard not to wonder whether her message is a code for something meaningful.
With what follows, the Knowing movie leaps to fifty years in the future, where MIT professor John Koestler gets his hands on the coded letter. As he races against time to unravel the mysteries behind the letter, he learns that it holds the key to humanity’s future and eventual doom. On paper, Knowing‘s premise sounds no more generic than the regular fare of science fiction movies that come and go year after year. However, its execution of the subject makes all the difference and forces viewers to argue whether it has religious metaphors or ambiguous cosmic connotations.
Knowing Is About Predetermination & Fate
Whether Knowing‘s depiction of an alien race has Christian symbolism will always remain debatable, since its answer is a matter of personal interpretation. However, one element about the sci-fi movie’s storyline is certain: it centers on how Nicolas Cage’s character feels divided between the conflicting philosophies of determinism and randomness. In Knowing‘s first arc, Koestler discusses the probability of the existence of other worlds in outer space, which suggests that a part of him believes that there’s more to the universe than his day-to-day experiences as a human.
Yet, moments later, he finds himself drinking away the sorrows of random events from his past. The determinism vs. randomness conflict haunts him again when he uses Earth’s ideal distance from the Sun as a metaphor to explain how every event could either be a consequence of pre-determined fate or just pure randomness. When his student asks him what he believes in, he responds by saying that “sh** happens,” affirming that he is skeptical about the existence of fate and inclines more toward believing in randomness. This begins to change, however, when he learns that the numbers on the time capsule letter predict the future with mathematical exactitude.
Nicholas Cage’s Knowing Suggests Things Happen For A Reason
The skeptic in Koestler still holds him back when a fellow professor convinces him that he is only deriving meaning out of random numbers and that most numbers on the note mean nothing. However, John’s faith gets restored when even the meaningless numbers start making sense as the precise coordinates of future disasters. As a result, John stops doubting the numbers and begins believing that humanity’s imminent doom may be set in stone.
To nail down its themes surrounding determinism, Knowing also seems to portray how an alien race had foreseen Earth’s future and was trying to rescue a selected few moments before disaster struck the planet. As Nicolas Cage’s character comes to terms with his pre-determined reality, he realizes that for his son to survive, he must let him leave with the aliens. With this, in the Knowing movie ending moments, John finally seems to shed his “sh** happens” ideology, but the solace from the wisdom of understanding that everything happens for a reason comes with the hefty cost of accepting that he must let go of his son.
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