{"id":2409,"date":"2008-10-12T08:31:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-12T08:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2008\/10\/signs\/"},"modified":"2008-10-12T08:31:00","modified_gmt":"2008-10-12T08:31:00","slug":"signs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2008\/10\/signs.html","title":{"rendered":"Signs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>I missed Signs <\/span>when it came out in the cinemas, and never got around to watching it on DVD until last night. I was very impressed. Shyamalan\u2019s direction is stylish, tight and perfectly matching the suspenseful storyline. With creative camerawork he manages to convey the ordinaryness of the home life while infusing the whole thing with a sense of the supernatural. He clearly owes a great deal to Hitchcock and Spielberg\u2026the wheeling flock of birds, the children\u2019s swing set with a swing moving eerily. These allusions to The Birds <\/span>and E.T. <\/span>are just two examples.<\/p>\n

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What I also enjoyed about the film was the excellent script and superb acting. The scenes with the children were especially well written. Both children were believable\u2013not the cardboard cutout kids you see in so many scary movies, but\u00a0likable, eccentric, children who have been wounded by tragedy and are trying to survive. Gibson\u2019s scenes with them are some of the most natural and best portrayals of fatherhood on film I\u2019ve seen.<\/div>\n
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The film has been criticized for being a bit heavy handed with the inner meaning. I don\u2019t think it was. It\u2019s true there are a couple of \u2018meaningful conversations\u2019, but they\u2019re done from a standpoint of Hess\u2019 (Gibson\u2019s) doubt as an Episcopal priest who has lost his faith, not from a preachy point of view. When the plot points resolve in the final scene to support faith and the fact that \u2018there are no coincidences\u2019 the meaning comes through clearly, but not with a punch on the nose.<\/div>\n
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What else did I like? The monsters looked demonic. The fact that they were defeated in the way they were by a \u2018primitive solution discovered in the Middle East\u2019 was a nice theological point. I\u2019ve always contended that there are definitely such things as \u2018extra terrestrials\u2019. They don\u2019t live on other planets. They live in another dimension. They\u2019re what we\u2019ve always called angels and demons. That they\u2019re visible in the film only makes the film even more of a morality tale for our age. It\u2019s interesting to see this handled with a strong spiritual subtext, and no better actor to take it on than Gibson.<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I missed Signs when it came out in the cinemas, and never got around to watching it on DVD until last night. I was very impressed. Shyamalan\u2019s direction is stylish, tight and perfectly matching the suspenseful storyline. With creative camerawork he manages to convey the ordinaryness of the home life while infusing the whole thing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":557,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nSigns<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I missed Signs when it came out in the cinemas, and never got around to watching it on DVD until last night. I was very impressed. 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