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Rating: Catastrophe. Potential extinction/annihilation of the human race. There are three threads that I will pragmatically identify with three films. American blockbuster: Independence Day. Pain and faith included: Signs. Psyche-connection: Melancholia.
I assume you have seen them; if not, I invite you to do so.
I am a simple soul, easily reassured. I adore the first two. The first because it brings joy to the child within me. The second because it encourages him to grow up. The third I avoid if I can because it kills that child.
Signs. M Night Shyamalan, the eccentric egocentric who, if he doesn't have a part (almost always as a fool) in his own films, it might as well snow in July.
As someone who believes in and hopes for extraterrestrials, I adopted Signs right away.
Seduced by typical alien invasions emanating from the chaos of the metropolis, see the already mentioned Independence Day, but also War of the Worlds or the recent Skyline and Beyond Skyline, I approached with curiosity this remote farm in Pennsylvania whose patriarch-pastor, a rather unperturbed Mel Gibson, is just getting by as a widowed father with two sullen children and a bachelor brother with a cleft lip, the incomparable Joaquin Phoenix.
Come on, let's admit it. To the most attentive and mischievous viewer still unaware of the plot, the salient aspect won't have escaped notice. The Reverend has lost his faith, but through a whole odyssey, he will find it again.
And so it is: only this odyssey is well unraveled, enriched, sober but bold in its rather slow rhythm.
It's no coincidence the film garnered praise. It's a completely new angle. A horde of bad ETs is on the way and they go to get a questionable-quality take-out pizza.
At first, I didn't find the plot credible, but then I said to myself: and why not? When the family barricades themselves at home without even a gun but shielding themselves with the strength of memories, the conflicts that emerge and reconcile, the pain made bearable by an imminent tragedy, then, there, I realized there is a third way. The way of love. Yes, I'm not kidding.
Love is the daunting and indispensable pillar of the blockbuster.
To make the subtle line that connects all the characters even more believable, the tones never rise: it's whispered from start to finish. So much so that the alien invasion takes a back seat, overshadowed by the man trying to piece together a painful puzzle, made of contradiction (a priest lives to comfort, to alleviate others' suffering but takes a step back and discards the collar when personally wounded) and a present seeking his charisma.
The more he, Graham, wants to step back, the more co-actors and events throw him into the center of the scene.
In the course of the film, he ends up becoming the master and guardian of the future of humankind. Creator of an absurdity that nonetheless reconciles, even when the strategic alien-risk board game spectator can raise a hand and assert their legitimate objections.
But, above all, it provides a comfortable thread of tension that does not defibrillate, but transmits small and almost imperceptible shocks encouraging the viewer to take the protagonists by the hand and warm themselves during the viewing.
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