Trash it or love it, it is unique

Rating: Null/10 (8 August 2002)

*SPOILER ALERT* I grow tired of people running down films and filmmakers who try to do something different. Filmmaking is not an exact science; it is art, and suffers from the same ills that other art forms (dance, music, theater, etc.) do -- what the artist sees in his/her head is not always able to be duplicated in the chosen medium. This "constipation of vision" is why artists cut off their ears or drink themselves to death or commit suicide.
Love it or hate it, "Signs" is proof that M. Night Shyamalan has perhaps discovered visionary Ex-Lax (sorry for the pun). The film quickly establishes a pace, rhythm and tone -- both story-wise and visually -- and follows through beat for beat, measure for measure. Shyamalan frames his scenes the way his characters are meant to see them and is true to their voice. For example, Mel Gibson's character, Graham, has become emotionally and spiritually withdrawn following his wife's unexpected death. So nearly every one of scenes is quiet and introspective, with only the slightest reactions registering on his face but clearly taking hold within until he reaches a breaking point, effectively displayed at key moments in the film as catalysts for action -- both within his character and the story itself.
Many people have complained that the "alien invasion" logic doesn't work. They appear stupid and clumsy (unable to escape a pantry) and susceptible to water (which is in abundance all over the Earth and in the human body). The alien invasion, however, is not the focus of the story. This is a film that uses its alien invasion theme not like "Independence Day" (told on a huge canvas featuring military heroics and technology) but rather like "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" -- as a backdrop and catalyst for an examination of one man's spirituality and faith in a higher power, a destiny. In that regard, the film works brilliantly. Gibson's Father Hess is a man who has turned his back on his God, believing that there is no hope -- only fear -- only to find himself, like Job, tested to the extreme to rediscover his faith.
His family, in turn, illustrates the various types of faith that exist: his brother, Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix in a terrific performance) is a "believer" who doesn't question but accepts what he sees as fact and acts upon it as such; a son, Morgan (Rory Culkin, also terrific), who takes an academic approach to his faith, believing because it can be proven in a book or by hard facts; and a daughter, Bo, whose faith is perhaps the strongest of all -- she sees and believes everything with eyes of a child, innocent and unsullied.
There are those who would complain that Shyamalan is preaching in this film, putting forth Christianity and God as the solution and savior in times of peril. For atheists and non-Christians alike, that is a tough pill to swallow, no doubt, for it is not what they believe. But this is a film not about Christianity or God, but about Faith and its power. Believing that things happen not by chance, but for a reason that will be made clear. That's why the film begins and ends with the Hess family and their farmhouse and doesn't need to show a global story of us vs. the aliens. And also why (again a major complaint) it's not important for us to know how or why the aliens have retreated. Ultimately, this is why the film -- and Shyamalan visions -- works.
Shyamalan is not the next Spielberg (the "Next Anyone/Anything" concept is completely ridiculous, by the way), but they share a common trait, one found also in filmmakers like Kubrick, Hitchcock and even John Ford: An ability to take the picture in their head and translate it into the picture on the screen, with its scope, drama and power.
"Signs" is brilliant, both as entertainment and an illustration of the power of filmmaking, unique in conception and execution and as powerful and thought provoking as any film I've seen this year.