A Case for Signs

M. Night Shyamalan's Signs is possibly the quietest summer blockbuster ever released. Shyamalan is a writer-director who built his reputation on thoughtful psychological portraits of figures on the fringes of the supernatural and subsequently ruined his canon with a string of increasingly terrible films reverse engineered around sudden gotcha plot twists. Signs debuted to mixed reviews and hasn't seemed to grow in stature the way other misunderstood gems like Citizen Kane, Vertigo, or Singin' in the Rain were rediscovered by audiences and underwent analytical re-assessment with film criticism. It's true that at times Signs can be a clunky film; overly stylized and rigid with dialogue bordering on stilted. Yet still, here is a quiet but thrilling drama that masquerades in the genre of a Sci-Fi alien invasion film featuring sequences so richly cinematic that Hitchcock himself would have been jealous. Shyamalan understands visual storytelling and in that respect Signs is kind of a masterwork.

Signs begins silently, the Touchstone logo gives ways to a black screen.  Finally, the shrill dissonance of a lone violin cues the fade-in of a lone light source.  The orb light allows stark black credits to be read while foreshadowing the play on flashlights that will occur throughout the film.  There is nothing incredibly complex about the design of the sequence.  Still, the elegiac violin resonates in time, rhythmically, with the light source which glows and then dims as a dying flashlight would.  This sequence constantly barrages spectators with alternating moments of light and dark.  This interplay of flickering light and shadow is a self-reflexive reminder of the film's own projection.  Signs' main character Graham will have to open his mind and reconcile the impossible in this suspenseful mystery.  Darkness breeds terror and Signs is a film that is at its core one of lightness versus darkness.  More to the point, the round light source foreshadows the visiting alien beings.  It graphically mirrors the shape to be found in the crop circles.  It signifies dawning knowledge and understanding that comes from learning and enlightenment as in Plato's Allegory of the Cave. As James Newton Howard's score crescendos into a Bernard Herrman-esque symphony, Shyamalan is playing the audience's expectations like Hitchcock and his proverbial piano.

The narrative is fairly classical in its design.  A wounded antihero must undergo a significant rite of passage in order attain the necessary growth as a character to reclaim his standing, power, and sense of identity.  In this case that antihero is Reverend Graham Hess, a man who gave up his belief in God after a terrible accident claimed the life of his wife.  He lives with his goofball brother Merrill; a failed professional baseball player, and Graham's two precocious children on their farmland.  When strange crop circles begin appearing in the corn fields, the family struggles to understand what has made them and the larger implications of why they have been made.

The film begins, post credit-sequence, with Graham awakening alone in his bed in the dark.  He tours the house completing rounds like a security guard where the mise-en-scene steps up for visual storytelling.  The opening sequence is wordless and scoreless allowing the ambient sound of Graham's wake-up routine to dominate.  The sparse sounds of his footsteps and breathing emphasize the loneliness.  The walls are worn and gray and there is a lack of warm light.  The farmhouse does not strike spectators as being particularly inviting from the get-go.  The most telling shot in the opening sequence is a static that frames the bathroom doorway just left of center.  The frame is devoid of human figures (although the soundtrack features the sound of Graham's urination off-screen).  The emptiness leads the viewer to scan the frame for important information: why is Shyamalan showing this to me?  After a moment the careful viewer will observe markings on the wall from where a crucifix had been removed.  The idea being that this object had adorned the wall for so long it protected the area beneath it from aging.  It sets up the plot point that Graham Hess has recently given up on God.

A piercing scream cuts through the somber opening.  Graham stamps through the house (again wordlessly).  His brother Merrill is awakened from a deep sleep and shoots out of bed like a Chaplin-esque silent comedy star.  The men tear outside and for the first time dialogue is spoken, sparsely, when Merrill asks, "where are they?"  The loaded question alludes to a lot more than just the missing children as the film will ponder.  Still, the single line of dialogue indicates that this will be a story focused primarily on the family unit.  The Hess children scream for father and uncle Merrill from deep within the cornfields.  Graham and Merrill charge after them through stalks of corn taller then themselves.  It is in this opening sequence that the predominant style and visual motifs of Signs will be established.

(Characters continually stare into off-screen space)

The visual motif of Signs consists of obstacles to sight.  Throughout the film there are a number of ways in which Shyamalan impedes sight (sight of character and sight of spectator).  Signs thematically equates seeing to understanding and subsequently to believing (as the old adage states).  To deny Graham Hess and viewers the ability to see is to deny them the knowledge by which to grow.  Also, practically, the denial of visual material to spectators fundamentally enhances the suspense of the film by further delaying the resolution of expectations.  Corn mazes, flashlights, television static, children on a video prohibiting the view of an alien, Graham struggling to see what is on the other side of a pantry door, all of these items connect major sequences throughout the film where vision is impaired and the corresponding knowledge to be gained is withheld.

(refusal to make eye-contact)

Graham finds his son staring off into the distance.  There is no point-of-view shot to orient us to the object of his gaze.  They speak to each other without making eye-contact; yet another component of the motif on broken sight-lines.  Many conversations within Signs occur with a significant lack of eye-contact between the conversing parties.  This technique is off-putting, and paces the the drama deliberately slow.  The characters speak methodically as they choose their words carefully.  Something else in off-screen space is always vying for their attention.   The boy points, his father follows, and slowly we track backwards through the corn until spilling out into a large area of trampled corn stalks.  It is important to note that from the beginning the children have been established as seeing but it is Graham who needs to be pointed toward the answers.  Much of the second-act of the film consists of the children (and Merrill is included in this group) trying to convince Graham Hess that the crop circles in their yard were indeed left by alien beings.  Still, this sequence in the corn does not just deny Graham the ability to see but also the spectators.  We are aligned with Graham Hess as our protagonist.  The entire time Shyamalan resists an establishing shot.  We are subjected to a series of close-ups edited at a slow rhythm.  We are always observing the observer.  The focus is on the wandering eyes of Graham Hess as dogs bark ferociously in the background.  His boots crunch softly on the corn.  Finally the camera backs up to a very long shot that foregrounds two German Shepherds barking at the sky.  Lastly, Shyamalan presents us with a bird's-eye-view of the crop circle.  For the first time the viewer gets a clear sense of space as they see the majesty of the near-perfect circle trampled in the middle of a cornfield.  Whose point of view is this meant to be?  That of the aliens?  Does this shot provide dramatic irony allowing us in on the answer to their unspoken questions?  The family stands in the center, walled-in and helpless (knowledge-less), and the journey of exploration begins.

(Framing the family unit)

This opening sequence introduces the film expertly.   It conveys the sense of fear and mystery that will drive the central narrative.  It introduces the themes of family, coincidence, and faith in evocative visual ways.  The lack of dialogue is intentional and a powerful choice for a film labeled Signs.  It is intelligent writing to drive the film along on important visual cues rather than allowing dialogue to push storytelling forward.  Along the way Signs will have moments of perfection (the climax in the darkened basement as the boy suffers a debilitating asthma attack) and moments that border on laughable ("Swing Away, Merrill.")  Still, when writer/directors are as focused on utilizing the visual elements of film form to generate meaning in their pictures as M. Night Shyamalan, we should consider the work carefully.  Signs is a great movie.

Lucid cast/crew on I Need Help podcast

Last Friday, some of the cast/crew of Lucid (Joseph Lavallee, Michael LoCicero, and myself) sat down with comedian Jon Stenning to participate in a Lucid-themed episode of his wonderful Podcast "I Need Help."

Please listen to the show, for free, here

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Lucid - A Short Film

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Lucid - Trailer