Buy it... if fifteen to twenty minutes of grand, harmonic, choral, and majestic fantasy material in this score's final quarter is worth an abundance of prickly and unsettling atmosphere for the preceding scenes of suspense and intrigue.

Avoid it... if, despite this score's functionality in all its quarters, you expect Marco Beltrami to explore the musical representation of this film's concepts from any particularly memorable new direction.

Beltrami

Knowing: (Marco Beltrami) You can add Knowing to the long list of films that completely spoil the intellectually stimulating potential that their concepts originally had. It attempts to lure you into existential contemplation mode while simultaneously bombarding you with brutal imagery of death and destruction, tacking on a redemptive ending that can only be termed cheaply religious after the gory, unjustified mishandling of the film's previous two hours. The surprising aspect of this cinematic failure is the fact that director Alex Proyas had managed to avoid many of the same pitfalls in Dark City, a film that continues to impress many years after its quiet debut. The plot of Knowing has the kind of structure that can't really be discussed without spoiling the surprise for the 12% of viewers who don't enter the theatre having been able to predict the basic premise of the ending from the film's previews. Proyas attempts to cover up for the story's immense logical fallacies by utilizing the same tear-jerking familial separation fears that inhabited A.I. Artificial Intelligence and the plane crashing, train derailing, and landmark exploding displays of CGI wizardry that highlighted Independence Day. Both concepts have been explored far more effectively than in Knowing, a film that also borrows a bit too heavily from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Ultimately, it is disgusting and gratuitous while trying to masquerade itself as a truly thought provoking endeavor. Some reports indicate that studio meddling with the script forced some of the most distasteful scenes of destruction upon it in post-production, which might explain composer Marco Beltrami's silly, tongue-in-cheek cue titles that exist on the soundtrack album. Proyas claims to have great trust in Beltrami's talents, though despite their strong collaboration on I, Robot a few years prior, the composer's music for Knowing is only memorable in parts and overshadowed in others by the second movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7. Beltrami tackled Knowing in predictable fashion, sculpting a score in three distinct sections that address the suspense of the story's first 90 minutes, the fantasy of its concluding half hour, and the overarching sense of tender love between father and son that exists in short sequences throughout. All three portions qualify themselves in context, though Beltrami creates an environment of predictability that pulls inspiration from Bernard Herrmann and James Newton Howard, rarely providing an unexpected twist.

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The suspense material in the first three quarters of the film is occupied by a frantic, skittish personality of plucked strings and other prickly elements. As Nicolas Cage's character first decodes a series of numbers predicting the disasters to come, this technique is placed as practically the only element in the film's soundscape. Though the cue "Door Jam" may not be entirely pleasant, it does stir a growing sense of intrigue and, later, panic. This idea translates into a representation for the "strangers" as well, though thankfully the intense whispering sound effects heard in the film to represent their communication are absent from the score. The pretty, though arguably underplayed piano theme for the father/son relationship in the story is most poignant, of course, at the end of "Caleb Leaves," though it is sufficient in its task prior to this moment. The overblown fantasy elements allow Beltrami's descending title theme to rattle the floors with broad strokes of brass in the three climactic action cues. It's not a particularly memorable idea (outside of the fact that nearly every major motif in the film descends), though it does have a slightly brutal tone to its deliberate pacing that adequately represents the destruction at hand. The choir is employed during these sequences as well, culminating in a "come to Jesus" style of grand harmony in "Who Wants an Apple?" that only exacerbates the level of dissatisfaction with Proyas execution of the concept on screen. Still, as Beltrami shifts from suspense to majestic fantasy in "Shock and Aww," the resulting grand, harmonic scope does provide for about fifteen minutes of extremely engaging material on album. The "Caleb Leaves" cue is worthy of special note, though despite its easy, melodramatic and bittersweet tones, it really doesn't explore the concept from any particularly new direction. The use of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 in the following scene, as Cage's character drives through New York to be with his family, is extremely distracting and wrong for the tone of the scene. From the presentation of the album, it wouldn't be surprising if the Beltrami cue "Roll Over Beethoven" was meant to accompany this scene, and if so, it would likely have better addressed the tragedy of the event. The Beethoven recording is not included on the lengthy score-only album for Knowing. That product contains extended sequences of suspense on pins and needles early on, with smart but rather mundane electronic ambience joining it. The latter sequences save the listening experience, though only for a quarter of its running time. On the whole, Beltrami's music here is functional, but just as predictable as the film's disappointingly shallow narrative. ***   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Marco Beltrami reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.75 (in 20 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.87 (in 14,767 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.