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Lunches a propaganda work: Alex Proyas’ "Knowing" Kluges together a variety of worldviews together and continues to write the work of his author.
The criticism is as obvious as short-sighted: Who Alex Proyas’ "Knowing" has seen, it can be very easy about the conclusion, which designs a pre-Christian idyll – and consequently the film as "Propaganda film of the Christian rights" abbey. For this one-sided ideology-critical approach, however, you have to hide too many details than you can appear in the event of a closer look at.
First of all "Knowing" An unmistakable work of his director, much clearer than it is the merchandise spectacle "I, Robot" Show. While that in the wicked high gloss of other genre contributions of his time (which is only for five years), is fed "Knowing" Jerking steps for and further developing the style, the Proyas owed his reputation to be a director with vision, instead of a schnod craftsman. Proyas, so it seems, interested in his films not so much for the plot, and maybe that also explains the circumstance to become a little clear with his movie ends and pleaded clearly to make it possible to export. The strong of his films lie in the details that can move a plot or even alienated before it is already completed, and "Knowing" Is there no exception.
Even the first settings after the backblend prologue in 1959 are remarkable: while the credits are still running, the camera in jump-cuts slowly converge at the place of action, from the satellite and later bird’s eye view. The lights of a coed town on the American Eastern Custe, slowly recognizes New York, first to the left edge of the picture, the sea in the view center. The next picture shows only a part of the city, now on the right, Walder, Strahe, Scattered Hauser Prague the attitude. Zogern, back and forth, the camera usually finds her goal, a dilapidated house, in the middle of nowhere from Upstate New York or Massachussetts. The scientist who lives here with his son is alone, and the geography only plays an illusory role, just for the protagonists themselves, is for the movie but only McGuffin. If Nicolas Cage looks in the next picture by a telescope in the sky, then that’s the last setting of a wordless open-minded dialogue, shot and cells, between the spectator and the residents of this planet, who sees the earth as similar as it is "Dark City" also did.
The surreal of this earth never loses proyas out of the look: the house, an old grassy in the manor-style style, is a gothic (Alb) dream that is plastered in raw, the wooden paint dilapidated in it, and yet this harbinger of the loss always collides with Technology, progress and design in the form of flat screen TVs, smartphones and opulent iMac screens. The irony, with which Proya’s product names and brand icons sets into scene, seems to be the accusation of the reproach "I, Robot" counteract it with the Schleich advertising. The house only seems to be medial – television broadcasts, telephone, and of course the omniscience google – to be connected to the aune world, "Knowing" completely dispenses with travel and motorway scenes in its direct area, just on everything that could be geographically linked to the rest of the world. It is only logically, the Apocalypse just started in these links. Solar winds are responsible for the radio networks that the radio networks are a bit unstable, already reported in the movie a news program, while Cage in search of the next catastrophe resting through the channel. And finally it is an airplane that departs on the edge of a landscrew, next to an accident-related traffic jam, thus supplying the 81 death victims of the next prophecy. Proyas draws the Apocalypse as a process of insulation, if only far-, then transportation and finally the mass and telecommunications collapses, and last civilization and civilization itself underlying.
When the figure of Nicolas Cage at the end breaks up this insulation, and again seeks the community of his family, then the only foreground is a variant of the MEL GIBSON pastor in "Sign", which has fallen from faith (also by the loss of the woman), and again finds him in view of a global catastrophe. The gesture of the payroll with among other things to the pastor’s father, is not clearly religious gesture, as the crisis of the protagonist is not necessarily a faith crisis. Cage plays a professor for astrophysics at the Bostoner, and when he articulates his doubts and meaning search, then Proyas never commits the mistake to fix this conflict on a particular religion or world view, but let him as a universal philosophical problem, as he also Dissolve offered as abstract. The relation to Christianity has that makes Proyas clearly by the consistent non-knowledge of religious motives of his protagonist, has always only an exemplary character. Specially not only a religious world breaks together for this professor.
"knowledge" in attendance
"Knowing" paid by the knowledge of the past, the empirical knowledge, and from the knowledge about the future, which has a religious component. Even the supposed knowledge of the outcome of a scientific experiment requires a faith, at least those in the correctness of the calculations. The determinism, ruin for the Cages figure, is the element of most world views, whether Christianity, Islam or Sccitism, and is therefore as rational as religious. If the note with seemingly arbitrary numbers has been able to predict 100 disasters since 1959, however, however, however, through Google – is perfectly research, there are still doubts about the disaster number 101 and 102, no matter how well the method has proven so far. The numerical codes in "Knowing" are always metaphor for the last doubt that must remain, and thus also for the core of every conviction, be it scientific or religious, which never proved tolliggy but can be refuted to highest. In this score, the discussion between Cage and his film-son at the beginning of the film about the possibility for Aubertirdish life.
If at the end of the movie beings appear on the ground, which – by Daniken and Co. Thank you – angels or auberrirdish or both could be, then their picture is that of a ruckle, or a new initial. Mute, stoic and handsome, as it were, a uberrasse as well as a human origin before customization, communication and with each other. They are also the continuation of the Auberdirdische Experiment head in "Dark City" as well as the ancestors of suddenly personality developing robotous arms "I, Robot". Their appearance is peppered with elements of esoteric, religion, UFO faith and humanism, and if they are ultimately that humanity allows a new genesis, this is done mainly from the backbreaking at UR-essential, instead of the concrete and dogmatic Reference to a particular religion. That they only allow children to live on the new earth, eliminated as side effect yes (almost) everything "knowledge" – Progress as well as religious dogmas – and forces such an absolute new beginning.
Yes, "Knowing" Describes quite a positive effect of religious salvation teaching, and in the final states may endanger who wants. Proyas is a way enough to create its history universally, so also to create philosophy, sziaryism and a strict rational atheism. This reduces religion to any social phanomena among many who all have the same functions. Idetology critical prompts must therefore spat at Proyas’ film at the latest if they go to concrete standards. Otherwise, only the criticism remains the positive way out of a social nihilism, the "Knowing" propose. In order to be able to understand the film as a representative of his medium as failed, he is much too consistent in the variety of its funds, smart, and complex.