knowing (rich kelly now al proyas)

[sphinx]

a divided review for the script of richard kelly's current project called 'knowing'.  

spoilers fucking ahoy, kiddos

Fortelling the Future of "Knowing"
Darwin looks at Richard Kelly's screenplay
Friday, February 28, 2003

It's not very often that you hear of a movie written and directed by a twenty-six year old. So when I sought out DONNIE DARKO, Richard Kelly's first film, I was both impressed and dismayed. The film, a light David Lynch fable (if he stripped himself of sexuality and decided to adapt CATCHER IN THE RYE and throw in a remake of HARVEY just for the hell of it), was a so-so, slow-paced mind-trip. What Kelly was capable of was mood -- he created a static-electricity, an-inch-off-the-center-of-normal alternate-dimension weirdness. What he couldn't do, though, was bring his story together. People talk about not understanding the ending. I got it. I just didn't like it. In a small way it all boils down to one of those sappy films where someone sacrifices themselves to save a woman -- they reverse time, go to hell, go into the past, etc. As Roger Ebert said, Kelly weighed down our hands, but for the finale he left those hands grasping nothing. DONNIE DARKO was about a special kid who is visited by messengers, and who has to piece together everything he's being told to reverse a future he can see coming -- and in the process save everyone who would have been damaged in this world.
Kelly liked that story so much he's decided to tell it all over again. KNOWING, his new script, is literally the exact same story. Originally written by Ryne Pearson, KNOWING tells the jumbled story of a girl in 1955 who gets some sort of message about things that will happen in the future -- including the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK -- and puts this information into a time capsule her school is burying.

In 2003 construction workers unearth the capsule and history professor Adam Moore is called in to handle it. Since the lock is already broken, Adam decides to hand out the contents -- pictures drawn by third graders featuring what they thought 2005 would look like -- to the current third graders of E.L. Elementary, where his son is a student. His son, Owen, gets the prophetic drawings. When Adam gets a look at them, he sees that the girl also predicted the death of his wife. She died in a car accident exactly one year ago -- an accident that left his son deaf. Adam thinks it might be some sort of prank, but he has the age of the crayon authenticated. It proves it's at least forty years old. Which means that a girl, somehow, knew the future. Adam goes into investigation mode: Tries to track down the girl, Lucinda Mason, but she's dead. He goes to her daughter, Lael; she knows nothing of these dates or drawings. Adam figures out the other numerical lists -- they are deaths of local people in the area, just like his wife. He assembles the families of these people -- a cop and a math professor -- and they are, of course, skeptical, but there is enough honesty in Adam's voice that they want to believe him. The math professor surmises that the numbers next to the dates are locations. There are no names on the list, only initials, and the cop tracks down every person living in the area with these particular initials.

While all this is going on Adam sees odd messengers around. Including the Cloaked Giant, a businessman who robbed a bank and rode into town, a student who works in a restaurant him and his new "team" frequent, and a screenwriter from California. These strangers keep nudging Adam toward the truth of the situation. There's also Adam's son, who is getting a cochlear implant and is trying to deal with being deaf.

Kelly certainly knows how to set a tone, and KNOWING does hammer along at a heart- pounding, dreading staccato beat. Kelly tosses more and more stuff onto our backs -- new characters, mathematical nonsense, deaths, suicides, weird people who lurk in the background, new clues -- and leads us by the hand to the finish line. Only it all collapses just as we get there.

DONNIE DARKO had a six-foot rabbit with a wicked, gaping grin. KNOWING has a Cloaked Giant, who's only vaguely human. Donnie Darko was a special kid. Here we have Owen. In DONNIE DARKO there were a lot of messengers; same thing in KNOWING. DONNIE DARKO was about understanding the events that are going to take place and righting them. Ditto KNOWING.

I love investigation movies. People running around and connecting the dots. If it's done well the characters and the audience catch up only at the last minute and there's a mad rush to stop something. KNOWING gets all of that right. And when Adam is on the phone in the last few pages, having figured it all out, and he's screaming to do this and do that, and he zooms away in his car -- well, it's about as fine as it comes. It's pure white-knuckle time. You drool with anticipation. You list all the questions you've had. You wonder if your assumptions were right. Who was this guy? Why did this guy do that? Was it significant when so-and-so did this? Unfortunately, KNOWING's ending is as big a letdown as you can get. It's unclear as to what the bloody hell happened, and even if you get it, it's woefully anticlimactic. KNOWING is like running through a huge maze, dashing around walls, striding toward the end and finding that it's a brick wall. The unsatisfying ending explains exactly none of the creepy business happening before it. There's some weird connection to this movie, THE CLOAKED GIANT, which Lucinda saw on the day of her epiphany. The mysterious screenwriter's script is called THE CLOAKED GIANT. Adam even sees this guy in a dream. Well, who the hell is he and what does he have to do with any of this? What does it mean that she saw this movie? Does it have something to do with that she didn't see the end, but she saw the end of the world? Who knows. Why do all these "messengers" follow Adam and Owen around like stalkers, and only come around and talk to them when it's nearly too late? If so many people knew what was happening (and how did they know?), why didn't they tell them? It would have saved a whole lot of drama.

The truth is, KNOWING makes no sense. DONNIE DARKO's ending might have felt slight, but at least it capped the story -- there was an explanation to it all. KNOWING's shenanigans about clues and visions and messengers and dreams and math and religion -- it's all pretty finery. It's a paved road leading to a drop-off. Or if I may be really, really crude, KNOWING is cinematic blue balls. Kelly takes us right to the finale, keeping us on the edge, to then push us away with disinterest just as we're supposed to get paid off.

If Kelly wanted his ending to be about a kid getting a message from God -- or something like that -- and demonstrate how that kid saved the world, he should have ripped off James Cameron's THE ABYSS again (as he did in DONNIE DARKO) and showed something equivalent to that hundred-foot wave that was about to wipe everyone out. At the very least give us something other than a kid disconnecting his hearing-aid implant, looking incredibly calm, and having his father drive him home. (There's more business with a dead dog, but I won't bore you with it.)

KNOWING doesn't just leave your hands empty. It smacks your knuckles with a ruler. If you get caught up in this ridiculousness, awaiting the answers, you're made to look like a fool -- there are no answers. The plot is just mismatched pieces of a puzzle.

Kelly has talent. I won't deny that. He can wow you every once in a while. There's a scene of frenzied chaos set inside a hospital experiencing a blackout that shot live-wire life into the script. You could smell the fear, heightened by the setting, a "safe place," right there on the page. Kelly's great at setting up scenes terrifying in such real ways. When the Red-Bearded Man (another unexplained guy) chases after Adam, trust me: your gut clenches. But all the caged-dogs fierceness and keen-eyed tricks can't take away the fact that the whole script is built on an unstable, crumbling foundation.

The characters in KNOWING are on the short end of Kelly's attention. Lael sort of came alive for me, but only because I was picturing the stupendous Maggie Gyllenhaal in the role. Adam and Owen are living a particularly crummy, depressing life when the script opens -- Adam is still mourning his wife (he even blames himself for the accident), and poor Owen is experiencing a silent world. Kelly can't quite get the emotional mojo working when it's on a human level the way he can when people are frantic. Adam has a scene where he cries, but he's a closed-off character. He speaks in italics, literally, but I never got a sense of what he thought about this bizarre series of events. What's going on inside Adam's head when he finds out that info capable of saving his wife rested next to his son's school? It's such infuriating, insane information that a person might go crazy thinking about it.

KNOWING is a paranoid, overstuffed, hysterical, frustrating, redo patchwork of a script from a guy who has a really bright future. It could have been a great mystery-suspense film, like CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (something of an inspiration), but its promise is completely erased when you find out the whole thing was just your own curiosity reflected back at you.

Two of Richard Kelly's inspirations -- THE SIMPSONS and Stephen King -- are among my favorite things in the world. I think we'd probably have a lot to talk about. So while it hurts a little to point out the flaws in his script, I will say this: I can't wait for next time, because things look like they'll only get better. They say artists tell the same few stories over and over again, in different ways, and that may be true, but I think it's a good idea for Kelly to move on to new obsessions. Leave stories of the future and fate and chance and dimensional shifts to someone else for now.

During the commentary track for DONNIE DARKO Kelly was trying to explain away something he stole from another movie. After getting lost in his own verbiage, he laughed and said, "I don't know what the hell I'm talking about." And in the case of KNOWING, I'm going to have to agree.



-- Darwin Mayflower

if you're gonna reply about the article, remember to preface your post with a spoiler tag if it has any so we don't upset mikey

[Xixax]

I'm a bit unclear.

Is this movie already made and awaiting release?

[Ghostboy]

No, it's just a review of the screenplay. The movie is still in pre-production, although I hear it's hit a few snags, and Kelly may actually direct something else first.

This sounds really similar to Donnie Darko, but it also sounds like it might be better. Not that Donnie Darko was bad at all, of course -- but there's another thread for that.

[Raikus]

Kelly liked that story so much he’s decided to tell it all over again. KNOWING, his new script, is literally the exact same story.

There are obvious parallels to Donnie Darko, but to say that it is the exact same story is dumb. Archtypes are present, but it obviously is a completely different story.

And I HATE[/i] people who say "literally" when it isn't literal. If it was "literally" the exact same story it WOULD be Donnie Darko.

[RegularKarate]

And I HATE[/i] people who say "literally" when it isn't literal. If it was "literally" the exact same story it WOULD be Donnie Darko.

Yeah... same here... that's also one of David Cross' pet peeves.

[Cecil]

amen. im literally pissed off. literally.

[Ernie]

And I HATE[/i] people who say "literally" when it isn't literal. If it was "literally" the exact same story it WOULD be Donnie Darko.

Yeah... same here... that's also one of David Cross' pet peeves.

It's also one of mine but admittidely, I wsa probably guilty of doing it in the past. I'm going to watch how I say it from now on.

I hate it even more when people say "literally" when they obviously mean "figuratively", I just want to slap them for trying to sound smart and confusing people.

[Pedro]

And I HATE[/i] people who say "literally" when it isn't literal. If it was "literally" the exact same story it WOULD be Donnie Darko.

Yeah... same here... that's also one of David Cross' pet peeves.

David Cross is a God.  Hmm...I think a thread for him would be appropriate...

[Satcho9]

And I HATE[/i] people who say "literally" when it isn't literal. If it was "literally" the exact same story it WOULD be Donnie Darko.

Yeah... same here... that's also one of David Cross' pet peeves.

"Dude I literally shit my pants."
"You shit your pants!?!?!"
"No. I LITERALLY shit my pants."


"Shut up you fucking baby" is great. Go buy it.

[picolas]

And I HATE[/i] people who say "literally" when it isn't literal. If it was "literally" the exact same story it WOULD be Donnie Darko.

Yeah... same here... that's also one of David Cross' pet peeves.

It's also one of mine but admittidely, I wsa probably guilty of doing it in the past. I'm going to watch how I say it from now on.

I hate it even more when people say "literally" when they obviously mean "figuratively", I just want to slap them for trying to sound smart and confusing people.

fifthed. worst misused word EVER.

[Xixax]

fifthed. worst misused word EVER.

Still not as aggrivating as mispronunciation of words like Data (DAY-tuh, not Dat-uh) or Nuclear (new-clear not nu-cu-ler)

[picolas]

Nuclear (new-clear not nu-cu-ler)

SUX

[moonshiner]

doesn't it seem like Kelly's writing is aspiring to be like David Lynch's?...that Darwin character must throw fits about Lynch movies.

i hate when people have pet peeves.

[RegularKarate]

i hate when people have pet peeves.

So, would you say that' one of your pet peeves?

and "a lot" is two words...that's another one

[MacGuffin]

Fox Searchlight Picks Up Knowing

Fox Searchlight has picked up Escape Artists' Knowing in turnaround from Columbia Pictures, says The Hollywood Reporter. The supernatural thriller, which has just been greenlighted, will be directed by Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko).

It is the story of a man who unearths a time capsule with children's drawings predicting the future that was buried in the 1950s. One child's drawings predicted several horrible events that already have come true; however, one of those events has not yet occurred, and the man sets out to prevent it from happening.

Ryne Pearson wrote the original draft, which was rewritten by Kelly.