Knowing - The future ends now

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Movie
German title Knowing - The future ends now
Alternative spelling:
Know1ng - The future ends now
Original title Knowing
Knowing-logo.svg
Country of production United States ,
United Kingdom
original language English
Publishing year 2009
length 122 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Alex Proyas
script Ryne Douglas Pearson
Juliet Snowden
Stiles White
production Steve Tisch
Jason Blumenthal
Todd Black
Alex Proyas
music Marco Beltrami
camera Simon Duggan
cut Richard Learoyd
occupation
synchronization

Knowing - The Knowing Knowing (original title Knowing ) is an end time - Mystery - Thriller from the year 2009 by director Alex Proyas with Nicolas Cage in the lead role.

action

In 1959, a Lexington elementary school was opened . At the suggestion of the student Lucinda Embry, a time capsule is sunk into the ground in front of the entrance stairs and marked with a large decorative plate for posterity. This includes drawings by the students that show how they envision the future.

When the time capsule is reopened in 2009 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the primary school, the drawings will be distributed among the students. The notes of Lucinda, who has since died, are given to the young Caleb Koestler, who finds a sheet of numbers in his envelope instead of a picture. As he takes the sheet of paper in his hands, he sees a mysterious man standing some distance away who is looking at him. Caleb's father John, an astrophysicist at MIT , stumbled upon the series of numbers "911012996" on the sheet by chance, which he associates as the date with the attacks of September 11, 2001 and their official casualty number "2996". This spurs him on to further research, as a result of which he assigns all major catastrophes of the past 50 years to the series of numbers. Between the deciphered numbers there are other sequences of digits that he cannot interpret.

John reports his discovery to his colleague Phil. However, he is skeptical and believes that his theory is caused by apophenia . When John is on his way to his son's school on the date of the next predicted disaster and gets stuck in a traffic jam, he notices, while looking at his navigation device , that the unexplained numbers could be geographical coordinates . According to this theory, he is right at the next disaster site. As soon as he gets out of the car to find out the reason for the traffic jam, an airplane crashes in the immediate vicinity. When he comes home, he has to find that the number of victims of this disaster also coincides with the prediction in the series of numbers. He is now certain that he can predict the date and place of the next disaster. Reports in the media lead him to suspect a terrorist attack in Manhattan and he anonymously warns the authorities. When he gets there himself, he pursues a man whom he considers a suspect. But he turns out to be an ordinary shoplifter. Shortly afterwards, the predicted catastrophe occurs in the form of a technical defect that derails a subway.

Around the same time, mysterious men dressed in black seem to keep threatening his son Caleb. Just like the then student Lucinda, he can hear their whispering voices. John visits Lucinda's daughter Diana. Her daughter Abby has contact with the black men whom she calls "whisperers" because of the way they speak.

The last characters of the number series list consist of two mirror-inverted "E" which John cannot interpret. When he visits with Diana the abandoned house of the deceased Lucinda, they realize that it is an abbreviation for everyone else ( "all other") is and so the death toll would be the whole of humanity. However , the coordinates present in all other prophecies are missing.

John finds out that the last disaster on the list was a massive solar flare that will destroy the protective ozone layer and destroy all life on earth. After this theory has also been confirmed and published by other scientists and the government has urged citizens to get to safety underground as possible, panic breaks out across the country . There are violent clashes and looting.

John finds the last coordinates left by Lucinda that point to the location of her home in the forest, away from the big cities, and believes that all four can find salvation there. But Diana flees with the two children to hide in mountain caves that she knows from her childhood. The "whisperers" kidnap the two children at a gas station. In the pursuit, Diana is rammed by a truck and dies shortly before John arrives, who has been informed of her whereabouts by telephone from Caleb. Diana had already learned in her childhood from her mother Lucinda that this date would be the anniversary of her death, which she did not want to believe her.

Arriving at Lucinda's property, John meets Caleb and Abby again. It turns out that the people with whom the "Whisperers" made contact are considered the "chosen ones" of these extraterrestrial beings and will be saved by them by taking them with them for a new beginning in a spaceship. Caleb has to say goodbye to his father because he is not one of the chosen ones. After the four mysterious men have shed their human form and transformed into their original form, they fly away in the spaceship together with the children and two rabbits - like many others all over the world. John goes to Boston , where he spends the last few minutes with his parents and sister. He had broken off contact with his father, a pastor, many years ago. Just before the earth burns in a sea of ​​flames, the father says that this is not the end, to which John replies: "I know."

After the annihilation of life on earth, the children Abby and Caleb land together with the numerous other spaceships on an unknown earth-like planet . In the last scene, the two children run through fields of grain towards a large tree of life and knowledge .

production

Originally Richard Kelly , who had already written the pen for Donnie Darko, was supposed to write the script.

Filming

The film was shot mainly in different locations in Australia , some scenes in Massachusetts as well . In total, the filming only lasted three months, thanks to the digital technology that director Alex Proyas has to offer.

publication

The movie was released in the US on March 20, 2009, and the film was shown in Germany on April 9, 2009. It was first broadcast on German television on November 13, 2011 on RTL , where the film reached a total of 5.75 million viewers, 4 million of them in the advertising-relevant target group and thus a high market share of 26 percent.

criticism

The film generated mixed reactions from both audiences and critics. The Internet service Rotten Tomatoes found only 33 percent positive votes from the critics and 42 percent positive votes from the audience (as of August 2019).

"Alex Proyas, specialist in future visions and creator of dark classics [...], delivers with Knowing an ambitious disaster allegory with a stab of action and creates both: On the one hand, he captivates with an atmospheric end-time thriller about fear of the future, being at the mercy and hope, with philosophical questions about predestination or the randomness of everything that happens. But he also maneuvers his film as a confused, increasingly absurd mystery drama with neat special effects and a booming soundtrack into a kitschy ending apotheosis . "

- Ilse Henckel - KulturSPIEGEL

“The aim here is not just to destroy the earth again and to have fun with desperate last-minute maneuvers; This is also about overcoming a tangible crisis of faith, biblical messages of salvation and apocalyptic intelligent design . [...] In fact, it is a lonely, hopeless fight that Proyas imposes on his hero. Knowing punishes those who know with kitschy esoteric meanings. "

- Dominik Kamalzadeh - The standard

“Alex Proyas is a director of cinematographic feats. In the blockbuster cinema he was even able to set one and the other mark that was not based solely on programming work, but on an exact fantasy of what should be seen there. […] Proyas also succeeds in his new film 'Knowing': The images of the vulnerable earth stand next to a plane crash filmed from an absurdly short distance and the derailment of a subway that almost bursts a screen; the contrast gives the sequences their meaning that goes far beyond the images themselves. "

- Peter Uehling - Berliner Zeitung

“There is no such thing as a coincidence. Everything follows a superhuman plan. This bold claim connects drunks, extremists and paranoid people with some followers of the recognized religions. [...] This kind of naive proof of God is quite literally the content of Knowing . By no means coincidentally, as an astrophysicist, is the representative of the science which formulates some of the strongest objections to religion. [...] Through the experience with the numerical code, he is then purified to a believer. [...] In terms of content, however, the film looks as if Christian fundamentalists and reactionary creationists had written the script. "

“The fact that there is a higher power at play in Knowing can also be seen in some mysterious messengers that we can justifiably interpret as aliens or angels. Alex Proyas makes every effort to allow both secular and religious interpretations. Knowing only unfolds its full force if you take its biblical undertone at its word. […] The fact that even the possible end of the world appears in the mild light of the certainty of salvation was branded by most American critics either as negligent or as pseudo-religious kitsch. "

- Michael Kohler - Frankfurter Rundschau

background

Reference to Ezekiel

The picture that is found in Lucinda's apartment and that indicates the sun is an image of the copper engraving of Ezekiel's Merkaba vision by Matthäus Merian . In the film, however, the images of the four angels and the throne carriage are reversed compared to the original. The rights to the film are owned by "Ezekiel Films Pty Ltd.". Director Alex Proyas stated that he tried to keep biblical references as subtle as possible and to address a universal symbolism of spirituality. However, some references would also be clear and obvious, such as the prophecy of Ezekiel and the tree at the end of the film that was intended for him as the tree of knowledge . After the four unknown beings have transformed, wings are suggested on their backs. Screenwriter Ryne Douglas Pearson stated in an interview: “You are there. But it is sufficiently nebulous that you look and ask yourself: Wait a minute ... are those wings? ". In addition, the names Adam and Noah were actually intended for John and Caleb in the original script version.

Patent infringement

In November 2009 the company Global Findability filed a lawsuit against the film studio Summit Entertainment for patent infringement and demanded injunctive relief and damages because the sequence of digits shown in the film allegedly violated the company's patented "geocode process", which is used to display global position information in a single, completely natural number. The lawsuit was dismissed on January 10, 2011.

7th symphony

The second movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's 7th Symphony is heard twice in the film, once at the beginning when the protagonist puts on a CD of this music and once at the end when he goes to his parents' house. The version heard in the film is a slightly modified variation in which some bass parts are missing, which makes the music sound brighter.

Awards

The plane crash scene was nominated for a 2010 VES Award from the Visual Effects Society .

The film was nominated for a Saturn Award 2010 in the category of best science fiction film .

synchronization

The synchronization works has Berliner Synchron taken.

actor Dubbing voice role
Nicolas Cage Martin Keßler John Koestler
Rose Byrne Ranja Bonalana Diana Wayland
Chandler Canterbury Felix Saalfrank Caleb Koestler
Carolyn Shakespeare-Allen Martina Treger Director (2009)
Menik Gooneratne Cathlen Gawlich Woman with baby
Nadia Townsend Marie-Luise Schramm Grace Koestler
Danielle Carter Debora refuses Miss Taylor (1959)
Alethea McGrath Barbara Adolph Miss Taylor (2009)
Ted Maynard Lutz Riedel news reporter
Ben Mendelsohn Olaf Reichmann Prof. Phil Beckman
Alan Hopgood Friedrich Georg Beckhaus Reverend Koestler
Lesley Anne Mitchell Anne Helm Stacey

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. IMDB: Knowing - Triva
  2. Knowing - The future ends now at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
  3. ^ Film review A ominous surprise egg from April 9, 2009
  4. ^ Film review The Apocalypse as Intelligent Design from April 10, 2009
  5. ^ Film review The future ends now from April 9, 2009
  6. ^ Film review 'Knowing': Refined to believers by numerical code from April 10, 2009
  7. ^ Film review What is written from April 8, 2009
  8. Audio commentary on the DVD
  9. Interview with screenwriter Ryne Douglas Pearson (English)
  10. US company sued film studio for patent infringement by script report dated December 8, 2009
  11. Case 1: 09-cv-02247 before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia at archive.org
  12. Dismissal of the suit case 1: 09-cv-02247 on archive.org
  13. Knowing - The future ends now. German synchronous file , accessed on April 26, 2013 .