- KnowingThe unexpected ending leaves viewers guessing and allows them to choose between two different interpretations: aliens saving humanity, or angels sent by God.
- The whispering people who telepathically communicate with Caleb and Abby are either benevolent aliens or angels saving the pure of heart.
- In the sci-fi interpretation, Caleb and Abby travel to another planet to restart civilization, while in the religious interpretation, they are seen as the new Adam and Eve in a new Eden, chosen by the angels.
More than a decade after its original release in 2009, Knowing remains one of the rare films where no one can guess the ending. After delivery Nicolas Cage look for the meaning of mysterious numbers that predict the greatest tragedies of mankind, Knowing connects everything together and gives an unexpected answer to all the questions that arise. Well, actually, the movie gives two very different answers, allowing the audience to choose what they want to believe. This explains why, after so many years, the unexpected ending Knowing continues to elude the audience. That’s why we’re here to break Knowingthe main events of the film and explain how the ending of the film can be interpreted in two ways.
What does the code in “Knowledge” mean?
Story Knowing begins in 1959 when young Lucinda (Lara Robinson) begins to hear mysterious voices in his head. One day, Lucinda’s teacher asks the entire class to draw what they think the future might look like so they can bury the children’s drawings in a time capsule and reopen it 50 years later. Instead of drawing, Lucinda starts writing numbers on a piece of paper, a coded message she hears in a whisper. The teacher stops Lucinda before she can finish the message, so later that day the girl hides in the closet, scratching the final numbers on the wooden door with her nails.
When the elementary school time capsule is dug up five decades later, young Caleb (Chandler Canterbury) receives Lucinda’s encoded message. Caleb is curious about the meaning of the message, so he steals the paper and takes it home. Caleb’s father, astrophysicist John (Cage), identifies some of the numbers as the date and exact number of casualties from some of the biggest disasters of the last 50 years, including the twin towers, earthquakes, and train derailments. . John doesn’t know what some of the numbers mean, but he is amazed that a young girl predicted dozens of terrible events. The mystery only deepens when John discerns three future events in Lucinda’s message.
John learns the meaning of the remaining numbers when he witnesses firsthand the plane crash on the same day as one of Lucinda’s three remaining prophecies. Thanks to the GPS in his car, John learns that numbers he couldn’t understand before represent the coordinates of each tragedy. With this information, John tries to prevent yet another of Lucinda’s prophecies from being fulfilled. John fails, admitting that there is no way to change the future. This tragic realization is followed by something even worse, as the number of victims of Lucinda’s latest prediction, which John read as “33”, is actually “HER” spelled backwards, which is short for “Everybody Else”. So, the latest tragedy on Lucinda’s list is about to claim the lives of every person on the planet.
Who are the whispering people following Caleb and Abby?
Once Caleb receives Lucinda’s message, the boy begins having horrific visions of a world on fire, sent to him by mysterious mute people who follow him everywhere he goes. These people, whom Caleb calls the “Whispering People”, communicate with the boy telepathically, sending him messages about the future. Caleb isn’t the only one contacted by the strange visitors, as Lucinda’s granddaughter, Abby (Robinson), is also followed by the Whispering People.
At the end Knowing, we learn that the Whispering People have chosen several members of the human race to save them from an impending apocalypse caused by massive solar flares that have come to Earth. Only a select few can hear their voices. In addition, the Whispering People were also behind Lucinda’s initial message, warning the girl of all the tragedies to come and giving her the ultimate place to be if she wants to be saved.
Desperate to save his son, John tracks down a closet that Lucinda scratched years ago and discovers the coordinates left behind by the Whispering People. However, at the meeting point, John learns that he was not chosen to go with Caleb. John is then forced to say goodbye to his son, who goes with Abby to the new world.
What makes the Knowledge ending more mysterious is that the Whispering People can have different identities depending on whether we approach the story through the lens of science fiction or the Christian tradition. This is because the strange creatures could either be aliens delivering children to safety in their spaceships, or angels sent by God to save the pure in heart.
Where do Caleb and Abby go in Knowledge’s End?
If we look Knowing In the sci-fi movie, Caleb and Abby end up on another planet that can support life. However, they are not the only chosen ones, as John can see several spaceships leaving the Earth’s atmosphere before the solar flares burn the ozone layer and destroy all life. In the film’s final scene, Caleb and Abby are running across an alien field of reeds, with other spaceships visible on the horizon. So one of the possible interpretations KnowingThe ending is that a benevolent alien race has decided to save humanity from impending doom by choosing enough children to restart civilization on a new planet. The message they sent to Lucinda only served as a warning to get people ready for the coming end of the world.
Knowing also has enough religious elements for viewers to see the goofy ending as a version of the biblical apocalypse. When Jon first meets one of the Whisperers, the strange man opens his mouth, blinding Jon with the light he carries within him. Also, once the Whispering People shed their human disguises and fly to their spaceship with the children, we will be able to see waves of blue energy that look exactly like wings. So it’s not an exaggeration to consider the Whispering Angels. This interpretation becomes more plausible if we remember that prophecy is an integral part of religion, and one of the main prophets of Christianity is John the Theologian, who wrote the Book of Revelation.
Cage’s character isn’t the only person named after a biblical character, as Caleb is also the name of one of the Israelites who survived the trip to the Promised Land, which echoes Knowingfinal scene. The new land that Abby and Caleb explore in the final scene also has a giant tree that could be the Tree of Knowledge planted in the Garden of Eden, and since Caleb and Abby are chosen to recreate humanity, they can be seen as a new version of Adam and Eve. Finally, the aliens/angels give Caleb and Abby rabbits, a universal fertility symbol used in Christian tradition to signify resurrection. So if we take all the religious symbols in Knowing as a key to understanding its ending, the Whispering People are the angels who choose pure people - children - and take them to a new Eden where humanity’s journey will begin anew.
Religious interpretation Knowing’The ending matches the drama of the film. In the film, John is a scientist who has ended his relationship with his father, the Reverend (Alan Hopgood). John needs the end of the world to restore his faith and make sure he sees his son and his dead wife again after he dies. So, just as John accepts faith after reason fails to explain the strange things going on around him, KnowingThe ending also leaves enough crumbs for people who are unhappy with the alien explanation to see the film as analogous to Christian beliefs.
Knowing currently available at Max.
Source: Collider
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