SIGNS

SIGNS
Tushar K Shukla

There are good movies,and there are bad movies.And Signs is one of the former ones.The way the director makes his presence felt through the haunting shots all through the movie is highly impressive.A lonely farmhouse, a troubled family, a man of disillusioned morals. The movie talks of inhibitions of the human psyche pitched against the power of the human endeavor. Thrown against the backdrop of a hostile unpredictable fear of the alien abductors, the movie carves out the basic human tenacity to gather ones courage and stand up against all evil. The movie scares and scares well. But the overpowering undertone is the movie's association and depiction of gross human emotions like faith, belief, pretence, fear, love, anger, fury and inertia. In his family, everyone is troubled, everyone has a past, including the ET-savvy kid whose warnings against the alien hoax hold salt in the end. How a simple reaction to a hoax transforms majorly into a perpetual intimidating truth is the crux of the movie. Mel Gibson delivers a powerhouse performance with the vulnerabilities of a former reverent who no longer believes in miracles, he believes every man on earth is on his own, there ain't no miracles in the world anymore for him and that is what he prescribes too for his family. Gibson's face and eyes are a playground of varying colors in the plot. His eyes carry the elemental human fear against the dark powers that pose a threat to our loved ones. The tendency to keep up one with the ones we love and care for to the extent that we are ready to give up everything that that we hold dear, is depicted well, very well in the movie. All the elements are shown in a demanding light with every element of a great cinema skillfully strewn into one encompassing theme that holds substance, quality and art equally well.