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This movie came out a while ago, and I haven’t seen it in a long time either. When it came out I went to see it, and loved it right up until then end, and then hated it. I think I saw it once more because someone I knew really wanted to see in (on cable) but I still didn’t like it. Then, a few months ago, I realized where I was wrong, and saw the movie in a totally different way. Now I love the film. After discussing it with Annie last week I felt the need to write it down, so here it is.
**SPOILERS**
My problem with the movie was how fabricated and set-up it all seemed. Sure, if those things happened to me, and everything came together like that I would have faith too. But it wasn’t a true story, it was completely constructed so that it would end in such a way and I felt cheated.
I could write a story (not a good story because I can’t write well as we all know ) in which everything that has happened comes together and means something, but it wouldn’t prove anything. And that’s what bugged me, I felt like I was being told that I should have faith because Mel Gibson’s character had all things in his life work out to basically perform a miracle, even though that character doesn’t exist.
A few months ago I suddenly realized where I went wrong. The point wasn’t that everything worked together, nor that because of it, everyone should have faith. The whole point (and this is basically the whole point of my review right here) is that Mel Gibson choose to see all those occurrences as a miracle. The point of the movie wasn’t about proof, it was about choice. The climax and resolution come from the character choosing to see his life as a miracle instead of coincidences.
It’s spelled out earlier in the movie so I don’t see how I could’ve missed it, but then again I’m an idiot so that may be the cause . Mel Gibson (I can’t remember the character’s name so I keep just using the actor, sorry ) is talking to his brother. Either everything is a miracle, each action brings is already known and designed for a purpose, or life is a series of coincidences. Originally Mel Gibson choose coincidence, later he choose miracle. The point wasn’t the cause, but the choice. And now I love the film because I feel the same way, you can see life in either way, it’s the choice that matters.
posted
Yay! Finally, another convert. I can't tell you the number of people I know who, when they first saw the movie, loved it, and now don't. It's great to see people going the other way. Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
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I have/had a problem with the aliens. They were so stereotypically the type of alien you see in pictures. Before you saw them, they were scary, afterwards, they were boring. The solution was too easy, the invasion without meaning or logic... why invade a planet which is 70% water if you're allergic to it? I had solved the story and the problems by the time the movie was half over.
I felt like the Alien story was merely a backdrop for the real plot. I would have liked to see them seperate the stories, or bring them closer together.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:I felt like the Alien story was merely a backdrop for the real plot.
That's pretty much how fiction works, though. In Star Wars, the Galactic Revolution was just a backdrop for the real plot, which is Luke's coming of age and struggle with his father. But it's still called Star Wars, not Luke's Struggle or something like that.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
Yes, but in veru good films the storyline, as well as being a setting, is important in some way to the reason the person made the film. In Signs, it just felt like... well, a backdrop. It felt disconnected.
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I think that may have been part of the point, it was disconnected. The aliens had nothing to do with what was going on in the story, they were just the catalyst for the important stuff.
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Exactly, Hobbes. Lots of good stories have "disconnected" settings like that. The real issue is what the characters do in those settings.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
I have a feeling I'm treading on dangerous ground in discussing this movie.
I don't know. Some movies knit together and others don't. I didn't like Star Wars and I didn't like Signs. Perhaps I don't like movies where the 'revelation' or 'journey' is blatent, as it is in those two. Perhaps I don't like the disconnected 'stage' type of storytelling.
I expect I'll figure it out someday.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Because it really wasn't about the character, or the aliens, or the kid, or the circumstances..
it was all about that one sentence in the movie -- something about "there are the kind of people who believe all things happen for a purpose, and the kind of people who believe everything is random and has no purpose" (that's a paraphrase -- I don't remember the exact wording).
That was the meaning on the movie, and that alone.
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I liked the under-the-door shot. Cool camera angle.
M. Night Shyamalan was born in India, raised in a Hindu family and attended Catholic schools in the U.S. So we see in Signs, Hindu philosophy and theology cast against a Christian American background; the lines are blurred between illusion and reality, past and future, choice and fate.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
I hated the movie the first time I saw it, and hate it more each time I think about it. *laugh*
Not only were the aliens ludicrous, but the whole idea that someone would voluntarily choose to think that God killed his wife so that he and his family might get a message that would save their lives -- after thousands have already died -- is rather grim. If I'm going to believe in miracles, a miracle worth believing in would be, say, the inexplicable explosion of the alien ships on entry into the atmosphere.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I walked out during the scene where Gibson didn't allow his son to pray.
As far as choices go, the movie perpetuates the myth that atheists "choose" to disbelieve in God, because they are angry at Him. Also, that atheists are inherently hostile to religion and "teach" their children to be hostile in the same way.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
Um . . . what? The movie showed one guy who chose to stop believing because he was angry at God.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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I think it's safe to say, Jon Boy, that the movie attempted to make a larger point than the analysis of one man's faith or lack thereof.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Yeah, but I don't think that point was "all atheists disbelieve in God because they're angry at God, and they teach their children that anger."
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
Dag: while it doesn't apply to EVERY movie featuring repressive Christians, it certainly applies to some of the ones you've mentioned. And, yeah, if I were a repressive Christian, I'd be pretty ticked about the portrayal.
----
Jon: I think the point was that atheists are, indeed, bitter about God because they choose to be bitter, and that you can choose to think God killed your wife for GOOD reasons so you can believe in Him again.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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I really don't see how you can support the argument that Mel Gibson's character was intended to represent all atheists. I don't even know if you can really claim that he was even an atheist.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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quote:And, yeah, if I were a repressive Christian, I'd be pretty ticked about the portrayal.
Um, isn't the point here that people without the negative portion of the characterization are upset? So that non-repressive Christians would be upset just as non-angry-at-God atheists might be mad about Signs?
Yes, you are correct when you say that Gibson's character is not really an atheist. And really, that's the problem. There's a lot of anti-atheist rhetoric that claims that atheists believe in God, but we are actually pretending to disbelieve, because we are angry at him. C.S. Lewis based his claim that he was an atheist who converted to Christianity on this argument.
Dagonee: I can't speak to Carrie, The Scarlet Letter, Frailty, and Cape Fear because I haven't seen them.
I think most Christians don't see Footloose as an indictment of Christianity as a whole, because the sects that prohibit dancing aren't seen as "christians" per se, but as "some other sect." And those sects that do prohibit dancing don't see the indictment of themselves so much as they think that the movie is wrong to promote dancing.
Granted, there is anti-Christian bigotry, and it does show up in movies. I think Jon Boy's point that Gibson's character is just one person is well taken; just as the Warden in "Shawshank Redemption" does not represent Christians as a whole, but rather, an example of one Christian who happens to be hypocritical (and worse).
But there is something different about the Gibson character. I'm not sure I can put my finger on it to describe it, but it seems to me that the part was written with a certain ignorance of what atheism is like, and so it comes off like some of the ignorant slurs that people make against groups they don't understand. Like Ted Danson's blackface routine, I guess.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
It never even occured to me to think he was a representation of athiests in general. I mean for starters, he was a believer most of his life, most athiests I know, while they may have been part of some church, were never any were near the level involvment that the Gibson charecter was (Priest, or whatever position he held, I can't remember now). Perhaps it's because the movie was so clearly a spirtual journey I just assumed it wouldn't be about an athiest (not that athiests can't embark on spirtual journeys or anything, just that it's a very unlikely topic for a movie, especially a Hollywood movie).
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So, what actual evidence is there in the movie that Mel Gibson's character is supposed to represent all atheists? 'Cause I'm really not seeing it.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
I really liked Signs, but I missed the dinner scene. But I agree that the pivotal scene is when he is talking to his brother about how everything is either a sign or a coincidence. I think that because he was a believer, of course his wife's death meant something, and up to that point he saw that it meant that God hated him or was angry at him.
But unfortunately for Mel Gibson, his statement of Agnosticism in marketing "Signs" meant that my husband wasn't interested in seeing "The Passion..."
Posts: 383 | Registered: Nov 2003
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posted
This (my 1000th post) was going to be a landmark, but neither it nor I am ready for that yet.
So instead I'll use it post a quite off the topic reply.
(Well, it does relate to Footloose at least).
We have a show here called John Saffron's Musical Jamboree - basically an ecelctic amalgation of comedy, sketches, music and politics - and it can be very funny. The host, John Saffron is Jewish, and went to an Jewish high school in Melbourne.
In one episode, he decides to confront the headmaster of his old school about dancing (after a co-ed school dance was banned). Anyhow, the headmaster decides to play along, and they have quite a funny "But doesn't Leviticus say.." style conversation (think the Simpsons and Krusty's father). After the conversation, John Saffron decides that the only way to convince the headmaster is to dance, footloose style, through the school.
So they all get dressed up in neon leg warmers and the works and proceed to stage a dance routine down the school stairs - much to the bewilderment of the students.
It's all done in good fun, and the teachers were pretty good about it. So they pack up and drive off in their van, mission accomplished.
The last line of the episode is a voice over, with John Saffron saying "It was only later that I realised the irony of bringing Bacon into the King David School."
quote:Star Wars was originally called the Adventures of Luke Skywalker
actually, it was orginally called "THE STAR WARS" then, "ADVENTURES OF THE STARKILLER, EPISODE ONE OF THE STAR WARS" and then "ADVENTURES OF LUKE STARKILLER, EPISODE 4, THE STAR WARS" and then "ADVENTURES OF LUKE STARKILLER, AS TAKEN FROM THE JOURNAL OF THE WHILLS(SAGA 1)". And then i think it ended up as Star Wars. And then later as we all know changed to Star Wars: Episode 4. A New Hope.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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) in which everything that has happened comes together and means something, but it wouldn’t prove anything. And that’s what bugged me, I felt like I was being told that I should have faith because Mel Gibson’s character had all things in his life work out to basically perform a miracle, even though that character doesn’t exist.![[Embarrassed]](redface.gif)
) is talking to his brother. Either everything is a miracle, each action brings is already known and designed for a purpose, or life is a series of coincidences. Originally Mel Gibson choose coincidence, later he choose miracle. The point wasn’t the cause, but the choice. And now I love the film because I feel the same way, you can see life in either way, it’s the choice that matters.![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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