SIGNS

by Rose Pacatte, FSP

Aug 2, 2002; 106 minutes
Touchstone Pictures/Buena Vista (Disney)
Writer/Director: M. Night Shyamalan

What a riveting supernatural/sci-fi thriller! My nineteen-year-old niece, Liz, and I went to see SIGNS yesterday, two weeks after its initial release. The theater was only about a third full (early show), but one girl screamed enough for all of us. Liz and I really enjoyed the light humor and the "journeys" of the characters, including the aliens, even though we don't believe in them. Could there be alien life out there? Well, if we leave it up to the cornfields to tell the story (Field of Dreams, X-Files Movie and now SIGNS), we soon find out we are not in Kansas anymore. We're not even near!

SIGNS is not a film about geography. It's M. Night Shyamalan's return to a familiar theological and spiritual landscape (Wide Awake, The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable) where he explores the supernatural, the unexplained, in the face of the eternal questions that human experience conjures up in the search for meaning and understanding. To me, it is ultimately a film about grief and the times that can indeed try a "man's" soul.

As I watched SIGNS, I kept thinking about Shyamalan's other movies and how he revisits similar themes: grief, some kind of communication with those who have died, and the limitations of our physical bodies; themes of incompleteness and completeness, seeing and not seeing then learning to see, and to grow and change. Like Steven Spielberg, with whom he has been compared (NEWSEEK, week of August 2), Shyamalan leaves a footprint in his films. Spielberg's most consistent print is lonely children; Shyamalan's is two-fold: grief for a loved one who has died and the search for understanding of what is seemingly inexplicable. Shyamalan, for one so young, can draw grief in ways that elicit the response of our deepest feelings. He does not leave us on empty, either. As Spielberg's films often leave us hopeful, the influence of Christianity in Shyamalan's work is explicit and at times almost too literal. For example, the final scene of SIGNS should have been dropped or rewritten to parallel the earlier doorway scene (reminiscent of the famous one from The Searchers). As it is, the ending is artificial, inconsistent and pat.

Here are some other things I've noticed about Shyamalan's movies. He focuses on the experience of a young boy (in Unbreakable, the boy is not as prominent as the Bruce Willis character; nevertheless, it's not a daughter but a son who was cast for the film); the main characters are never women (though females figure strongly especially in The Sixth Sense.) What struck me in SIGNS was that Bo was often not "cared" for, and I found myself asking, "Where is Bo?" then she would show up in the scene. It was as if she was an after-thought for her father and uncle after the point of the drinking water was made. If you go back and watch the last 20 minutes or so of SIGNS, note that Bo is never comforted as the son is. Everything is focused on the boy.

I have heard some comments that there are "false" Hindu and New Age messages in SIGNS. I am not sure what this means. Does it mean there are messages masked as Hinduism and New Age religion but are off base, or are there Hindu and New Age messages in the film rather than other kinds of religious messages (namely, Christian)?

First, I ask, why would anyone even think of this? Is it because M. Night Shyamalan is of Indian descent? Or is it because the signs of Hinduism are really there? And if they are, does it matter?

Interesting that the aluminum foils hats that the children make do look some head pieces represented in Indian art, and that the crop circles in the film spring up in India before spreading to other countries and finishing up in Mexico.

But to really see Hinduism, one must know what to look for: reincarnation, a caste system, a strong bias for male members of a family and complimentary social and metaphysical systems. Each viewer can do research about Hinduism, and its three stages of life and its explanation for existence. There is not enough room here to contrast Hinduism and the film in the way it might deserve and I would invite readers to do so if the suspicion of Hinduism is troublesome. But is SIGNS a film about the element of Hindu philosophy? For example, reincarnation? Not to me. But I would say it is a film about the afterlife and hope.

Is it a film about the caste system? This is a more interesting question, and examining it in the light of any film about alien invasions of the United States in particular (e.g. Independence Day) and the reactions of Americans to "others", one might wonder just what Americans consider an alien invasion. The aliens in SIGNS have either run out of resources and need to colonize the earth or they are evil and are invading to conquer. If we look at the reality of attitudes and practices in the United States today towards aliens and invasions, perhaps questions of caste are not inappropriate. Other countries are invaded, too, but we as Americans are less concerned about them. Perhaps we can start looking at aliens and invasions from the perspectives of peoples of other countries and walk in their shoes for a while.

A male bias? As noted above, Shyamalan demonstrates a preference for male characters, just as Hollywood does. No surprise there. The audience does not have a problem with male lead characters either, for as media literacy advocates and media researchers attest, women will watch what men watch, but men won't watch what women watch. As audience, we are trained to like and enjoy the primacy of male lead characters and stories that promote the male experience as the universal one. This universality of male dominance is not an issue of religion but of justice. As the saying goes: if you are not there (in TV, in movies), you don't exist. This worries me much more than traces of various faith systems or even New Age philosophies do. It's time for people of good will and faith to address basic human dignity in the way we tell stories, because until we do, other issues will never be taken seriously.

The things I liked most about SIGNS were the moments of humor, especially confession scene, Joaquin Phoenix and the way I could identify with Graham's grief. I thought this more of a supernatural thriller than a horror film, though it depends on how you define a horror film. I also liked the way the television was used as a devise for "seeing" and the role that it plays in our culture. In addition, I thought that the way that Shyamalan showed us that there are signs everywhere, from the patterns on curtains to the way towns are laid out, presented a broader scope for our reflection that just crop circles. Do they mean anything? Signs and symbols point the way. The question is, to what?

SIGNS is a movie that presents us with the historical recurring dialectic between rationalism and belief in realities unseen. It is a tension as old as the human race and divine revelation. No movie or commentary will resolve the conflict, but films like SIGNS can help us explore our beliefs and hopefully, take the next best step in our relationship with God, family and one another.