[Mel Gibson's] `Signs' Stirs Debate Over Religious Beliefs

The Hartford Courant ^ | 8/15/02 | MAURICE TIMOTHY REIDY, Courant Staff Writer

[Polycarp]

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http://www.ctnow.com/entertainment/movies/hc-relisigns.artaug15.story?coll=hc%2Dheadlines%2Dentertainment

`Signs' Stirs Debate Over Religious Beliefs

The Questioning Of Coincidences May Be Too Deep For A Popcorn Movie - Unless Shyamalan Is Involved

By MAURICE TIMOTHY REIDY

Courant Staff Writer

August 15 2002

Halfway through the new movie "Signs," Graham Hess, a former Episcopalian priest played by Mel Gibson, tells his brother there are two kinds of people in the world: Those who believe everything is governed by chance, and those who believe that there is no such thing as chance, that someone out there is responsible for every twist of fate. As Hess puts it, it comes down to one question: "Is it possible there are no coincidences?"

This is a serious question - the sort of thing you might expect from a sleepy art house revival, not a popcorn movie like "Signs."

But then again, this is M. Night Shyamalan, the writer-director who brought you "The Sixth Sense," about a boy who sees dead people, and "Wide Awake," about a boy who searches for God after the death of his grandfather. God, faith and the afterlife are stand-bys in the Shyamalan playbook.

Click here for rest of article: Signs

[Polycarp]

Excellent movie. Go see it!

[Polycarp]

good movie for you and the older kids ping...

[weikel]

Bad plot but it was very very funny( in reality if the aliens wanted to kill us without damaging the panet they would drop bioweapons from orbit). My advice think of it as a comedy. I loved when the kids were wearing tinfoil hats. The thing that pissed me off worse is that the "the battle against the aliens turned in the middle east" grrrr.

[Polycarp]

"the battle against the aliens turned in the middle east"

Context: the battle turned first in the middle east when they tried an ancient method [method unknown].

My immediate thought was they poured Holy water on them, thinking they were demons. Goes with the rest of the plot...

[semaj]

From the article:

"I don't think Shyamalan has any great doctrinal agenda other than illustrating that God exists and that he cares about us," LeBlanc said. "If that's radical, then that shows how spiritually impoverished we are as a culture."

The above quote pretty much says it all. Thanks for the post.

[patent]

"the battle against the aliens turned in the middle east"

Context: the battle turned first in the middle east when they tried an ancient method [method unknown].

My immediate thought was they poured Holy water on them, thinking they were demons. Goes with the rest of the plot...

Given the scarcity of the materials necessary to contruct that [method unknown] that the humans used, it seems incredibly phony to me that the battle first turned in the ME.

Otherwise, we enjoyed the movie, our first one in a couple months. I think our first one since Lord of the Rings, actually.

patent  +AMDG

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

Context: the battle turned first in the middle east when they tried an ancient method [method unknown]. My immediate thought was they poured Holy water on them, thinking they were demons. Goes with the rest of the plot...

I drew exactly the same conclusion.

[Polycarp]

[weikel]

LOL

[Paul Atreides]

It is an excellent movie. It presented, in my opinion, a realistic portrayal of how a family would behave at the prospect of, what they perceive as, the end of the world. They were regular people who didn't have all the answers figured out in the first 30 minutes. There isn't any gore (Al, or otherwise), no screaming airhead twits, no liberal "let's understand our enemy" twaddle, no Will Smith one-liners zinging left and right, and no cg special effects in the place of plot. The movie was eerie in a Hitchcockian way. I wouldn't mind seeing it again.

[weikel]

Yes that struck me too. They don't have much excess water in the Mideast. It just seemed like they were sneaking in the Islam is peace crap into the movie. The whole idea of advanced aliens fighting hand to hand is BS what they would do is kidnap someone take a DNA sample. Use the data to develop a virus that only kills humans and drop the virus in pods from orbit. Dead humans, intact planet.

[inflorida]

The movie was good and I thought the tin foil hat scenes were hilarious :-)

[Kwilliams]

Good movie. See it

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

"I don't think Shyamalan has any great doctrinal agenda other than illustrating that God exists and that he cares about us," LeBlanc said. "If that's radical, then that shows how spiritually impoverished we are as a culture." ~~ The above quote pretty much says it all. Thanks for the post.

FWIW, Shyamalan is a practicing Hindu who was educated in a Roman Catholic parish school.

The name he was born with was Manoj Shyamalan. His parents, physicians living in the U.S., went to Pondicherry, India, to have him, then moved to the Philadelphia area when he was a few months old. Although the family is Hindu, young Manoj was sent to a Roman Catholic school "for the discipline." He says he felt like an outsider and remembers teachers saying that people who weren't baptized were going to hell. (Says Shyamalan: "I'd be, like, 'I'm not baptized, so I guess I'll see you guys later.'") He also recalls being called in front of his schoolmates after he got the highest grade in religion class and being used as an example of why other students should work harder. ("The teacher was upset that I got the best grade and I wasn't Catholic.")

Without knowing anything else about him, I would arrogantly presume to suggest that this is a man on a Journey.

If Signs is at all reflective of his personal pilgrimage (and I suspect it is), he seems to understand that God "works all things together for the good of those that love him". Let us pray that the Spirit of Truth would continue to both irritate and irradiate the mind of this exceptionally-bright young man.

[Polycarp]

In the plot, I think the battle turned in the basement when the Father started talking angrily to God, the first hint of return of faith.

The aliens were so understated as to be impotent. They were big and ugly and scary, but they couldn't even turn a doorknow or break through the humans' puny defenses, and coincidentally, when the Father's faith returned, their attacks subsided.

And they were hurt by water.

I cannot help but think that 1)the big ugly scary yet purposely understated aliens who 2)in reality were only trying to steal humans (souls!) and were 3) vanquished by faith and water and 4)were first vanquished in the birthplace of all three monotheistic religions...

...adds up to an allegory for the ineffectiveness of Satan's demons in the face of faith.

...maybe I'm reading too much into it...

[Paul Atreides]

SPOILER ALERT

They weren't invading to take the planet, they were there to take humans.

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

It is an excellent movie. It presented, in my opinion, a realistic portrayal of how a family would behave at the prospect of, what they perceive as, the end of the world. They were regular people who didn't have all the answers figured out in the first 30 minutes. There isn't any gore (Al, or otherwise), no screaming airhead twits, no liberal "let's understand our enemy" twaddle, no Will Smith one-liners zinging left and right, and no cg special effects in the place of plot. The movie was eerie in a Hitchcockian way. I wouldn't mind seeing it again.

I loved the fact that the Heroes were not at the "center" of the "action" (as opposed to, for example, Independence Day). They were "regular people", out at the "periphery" of the so-called Big Picture.

This movie did not strive for the Epic... it strived for the Epiphany.

[Polycarp]

I think our first one since Lord of the Rings, actually.

Mrs. Polycarp just brought home a pleasant surprise, my very own DVD copy of Lord of the Rings.

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

In the plot, I think the battle turned in the basement when the Father started talking angrily to God, the first hint of return of faith.

Remember the son at the dinner table?

"I hate you...".

Remember the father in the basement?

"I hate you..."

Deliberate logical equivalence. Very cool.

[Paul Atreides]

Have you opened it yet?