With Signs, Shyamalan told us about the aftermath of 9/11

Speak about Signs from M. Night Shyamalan, means re-embracing the film of one of the most divisive directors remembered in the modern cinema scene. His works have always been indicated either as sensational missteps, or hailed as a breath of fresh air, imagination and originality. Shyamalan has been able to illuminate the big screen more than once with works of great beauty and depth. Signs is without a doubt one of the best sci-fi of the 21st centurybut even more, an absolutely perfect metaphor to tell us about the trauma of 9/11 and especially how America got out of it. And mind you, that this process as we know has not had a positive result and it was he, twenty years ago, who anticipated it between the lines of this fascinating narrative.

An alien invasion unlike any other

Signs came soon after Unbreakableone of the deepest and most interesting superhero movies ever conceived, not fully understood at the time, but today rightly referred to as an absolute cult of the genre (as opposed to its sequel Glass). The same can be said today of this very successful mix of horror, thriller and sci-fi, set in a small farming community in Pennsylvania. There, on a farm, the former Episcopal priest lives Graham Hess (a Mel Gibson in great shape), recently widowed, together with his brother Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix) and his children Morgan (Rory Culkin) e Bo (Abigail Breslin).

The United States has officially opened the UFO hunt

2022 will be a year to remember for ufologists: the US Department of Defense has launched a program dedicated to the study of unidentified aerial phenomena and in the spring at Harvard the Galileo project will begin to observe the skies in search of satellites or alien vehicles

Shyamalan from the beginning essentially locks up the whole story narrated within that farma microcosm that is gradually more and more oppressive and claustrophobic, where a hypnotic crescendo guides us towards becoming aware of an alien attack in progress.
The rest of the world, however, is essentially cut off from that lost farm, a microcosm where a terrifying invasion takes place, far removed from Hollywood gigantism.
Together with the invisible footsteps of hostile visitors, it materializes a fear that has no face, is made up of noises lost in the wind or in those gigantic wheat fields where Hess and his family realize they are no longer alone. The supernatural gradually takes the place of rationality, while Shyamalan speaks to us of a search for logic that surrenders to the inexplicable.

It is the rest of one of the greats topoi of his narration, focused on the unknownon the lack of certainty and on the struggle of the human being to arrive at a truth, which is often totally different from what he expected and very little consoling.
Signs dat this point of view, it can probably be defined his best movie, or at least the one in which these issues are perhaps most connected to a specific historical moment. Yes I know what you are going to say: which is The Village its great social and political metaphor, about America which lost itself and closed itself off to the outside world during the war on terror.

A work that reflects a common feeling

But what if it is not so? Signs possesses a diegetic structure that is simply perfect for remembering what we felt that September day in front of the television or the radio as we watched the world change completely, tragically embrace something we thought was only possible in action movies or comics. Signs it refers to a certain whole sci-fi fiction from the 1950s and 1960sa full-bodied world made up of films, TV series, comics and novels, above all winking at War of the Worlds. We are not talking about Herbert George Wells’ novel in the strict sense, but above all about the impact it had the radio drama of the great Orson Welles in 1938.

Today we can also laugh at the panic that CBS caused across much of America at the time, talking about an alien invasion as if it were live. But the reality is that we must recognize that even today, if we remember exactly where we were when the planes hit the World Trade Centerit’s because we felt the same sensations: disbelief, panic, bewilderment, loss of confidencenot to mention the disorientation in the face of the impossible that materialized on live television.
“You can tell your children that you were there” explains Morgan to little sister Bo, e many of us today, twenty years after that day, often have, if only to make it clear what divides East and West with blood. The Internet already in 2011 had the same function as the VHS that Morgan uses to record aliens in flight: the archive dedicated to a historical, global event.
The falling towers of New York are among the most powerful images in our historybut more importantly, they represent something we never thought we would ever see except in fiction. But Graham and his family are completely alone, as we wereas was every American that day, who saw the concept of collectivity disappear under his feet, disintegrated by the terror of the unknown. Wonder goes hand in hand with fear, with fantasy becoming a trap for the human mindsource of nightmares and uncertainties, up to the final revelation, which is above all a philosophical, theological thesis, rather than a happy ending.

The religiosity that crushes reason

Signs shows us the death of Graham’s wifeher last words to her husband before expiring on the hood of the car that killed her: “Tell Merrill to hit hard …”.
Shyamalan, also thanks to a crazy soundtrack by James Newton Howardmakes that ending, the fight with the monstrous alien in the dining room, a thesis on the concept of destiny, indeed of religious predeterminism, on the fact that everything happens for a reason in life.
The links with psychoanalysis emergewith the water that is the inner world, the feminine symbol and of the life that Graham and Merrill need, defeats their inner demons, represented by that green monster.

But above all, America’s willingness to react at that time emergesclinging not to logic or science, but to the values, to the ancestral ideals of the founding fathers to fight the terror of being prey to something external and alien.
America emerged from the optimists of the 90s, already sensed before the suicide bombers in the September sky, that something was broken, it was spoiled, the dream had already stopped.

Shyamalan showed us here that America seeking redemption and a returnand he obtained it in a nightmare scenario, a white America, made up of religion, traditional family, which a very personal concept of law, which loves baseball and has always lived in the fear that large spaces make immortal in the dark of night .
It is about America that often will then wink at conspiracyto populism, but above all to the primacy of the more generic and nuanced religiosity over reason, over science.
Something we never expected from an alien movie and certainly, another element that confirms the extraordinary power that this film still exercises today.