Shyamalan’s goals were worthy. “Signs” is the best
evidence to show a director trying to bring back a classical style in
filmmaking. LaSalle noted, “Just look at his opening: He starts with a formal
title sequence, with the credits all up front, while a Bernard Herrmann-type
score, heavy on the strings, thrums and jolts the audience. Shyamalan is trying
to be Alfred Hitchcock, and why not aim high? He's a 31-year-old director with
one terrific thriller already under his belt. Hitchcock is who he should be
going after.”
However, in “Signs,” Shyamalan depends on nonsense. The
style may be likable – for example, the first two shots are nicely done, and
each has a little surprise. However, it doesn’t take long to realize that with
this story of an alien invasion, shown from the point of view of a family of
farmers, Shyamalan is not coming from a place of inspiration or freedom. LaSalle
said, “This is fill-in-the- blanks moviemaking -- a little spiritual crisis
here, a little familial bonding there, a little uplift here -- and all of it
amounting to little more than nothing.”
Mel Gibson is fine, but he is also part of the problem.
He plays a former Protestant minister who left the church after his wife was
killed in a car accident. LaSalle said, “Directed to suppress his familiar
ebullience, Gibson turns in an assured performance of repressed pain and rage.
But in a movie so muted to begin with -- in its lighting, set design, action
and mood -- Gibson just becomes part of a bland mosaic.”
At least Shyamalan brings us right in. It’s early in
the morning, and farmer Graham Hess, played by Gibson, wakes up due to strange sounds.
He jumps up and runs through his cornfield, where he finds huge amounts of
flattened stalks. This either could be a prank or aliens. (Looks like no one
thought of an alien prankster.) When these signs start appearing on farms all
over the planet, people start to worry. Then, when spaceships appear all over
the skies, people catch on. An invasion is going to happen.
There are many ways to make an alien-invasion movie. For
instance, look at the large, warm, mindless-enjoyment way in “Independence Day.”
LaSalle noted, “Shyamalan tries a different tack, which won't be copied by any
time soon -- the small, sour, marginally less-mindless, dreary way.” The farmer,
his two children (Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin) and his younger brother
(Joaquin Phoenix) spend a lot of time watching CNN. They could be anybody.
Shyamalan puts the audience in the house with these people and leaves us there.
Soon we want to leave them.
The reason why we want to leave is not because of
tension, but restlessness. The story tells us of something amazing going on
outside, but forces us to stay inside a house with apparently few lights on,
because we can barely see the characters. LaSalle mentioned, “It doesn't take
long to realize that Shyamalan is building toward some epic showdown, in which
the family sits huddled, while aliens try and try to crack through the
boarded-up windows.”
Shyamalan is asking everyone to believe a lot. LaSalle
noted, “The aliens travel a billion light- years to get here and forget to
bring a bomb, a pickax or even a ball-peen hammer.” They want to take over the
universe. Are you serious, this cliché again?
LaSalle noted, “The excuse for all this bad science
fiction is that Shyamalan is more interested in tracing the former clergyman's
spiritual evolution. But the filmmaker stumbles on two key points. First,
there's the hill-of-beans factor. With humankind in a battle for survival, the
minister's problems don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy universe.
Second, there's the sheer absurdity of it all. Shyamalan wants us to believe
that an alien invasion might actually work to increase a doubter's religious
faith. If anything, it should push him irretrievably into the abyss.”
Shyamalan appears in a brief cameo, and he looks uncomfortable.
Hitchcock was always seen in his movies, but he never said anything. This is an
approach worth copying. Shyamalan might think about borrowing another page from
the king and letting other people write his screenplays. LaSalle said, “It
might free him from earnestness and open up his sense of experimentation.”
Hitchcock knew no one has to be a master at two
things. Just being in charge of one type is a project worth a career. This film
has moments that may scare sensitive audiences.
I’m sorry, but I’m in the same group as Doug Walker
where I feel this film started Shyamalan’s downhill slope. This movie is not
well. No one is talking right in this movie. The adults talk like children, the
children talk like adults. Why would Phoenix run out into the field screaming, “I’m
mad, angry, crazy, don’t mess with me!” That’s something a child would say.
Especially the description they give the police officer that the suspect was a
high jumper, and that’s it. Why would the daughter keep asking for glasses of
water complaining one is contaminated, another the dog licked, another has a
piece of hair in it, and the son says to record over the daughter’s ballet rehearsal
for a news segment to show their children? Who says those things? AND THE ALIENS’
WEAKNESSES ARE WATER AND WOOD!?!? THEY HAVE A PROBLEM WITH GETTING THROUGH
PANTRY DOORS!?!?!? DID YOU READ THIS SHYAMALAN!?!?!? WHY WOULD THEY INVADE A
PLANET MOSTLY CONSISTED OF WATER!?!?!? WHAT WERE YOU ON WHEN YOU MADE
THIS!?!?!? Charlie Sheen even questioned this in “Scary Movie 3,” which he said
it best there. With Gibson saying the aliens have trouble with pantry doors clearly states why this film does not work. I’m sorry, but avoid this one at all cost because it is
something that should only be played in an asylum.
Well, it’s not over here. Monday, I will discuss another
Shyamalan film that is so crazy, everyone doesn’t like in “M. Night Shyamalan
Month.”
No comments:
Post a Comment