“We have finally found the great Christian filmmaker we have been praying for and he’s Hindu.” — Roberto Rivera y Carlo

A few nights ago, I was lying in bed awake and I began to get frightened. I mean, really scared. I couldn’t get an image from the movie Signs out of my head. What had me so freaked out was the part when what appeared to be an alien made an appearance at a child’s birthday party. It seems odd that this part of the movie would stick so strongly in my imagination, since it was the profoundly Christian message of the film that made me love it.

Now, you may be wondering just exactly what was Christian in this film about an alien encounter. Plenty, although it wasn’t always obvious. This is the genius of its writer, director and producer M. Night Shyamalan. That he could slip a Christian message into a seemingly secular film about aliens is a testament to the power and potency of film to introduce our culture to the Creator. And the fact that he did so even though he’s avowedly not a Christian is a testament to the power and potency of God.

The film tells the story of the Hesses — Graham, an Episcopalian (presumably) priest who has lost his faith, his young son Morgan and daughter Bo, and his younger brother, Merrill — as they cope with the death of Graham’s wife. Adding to their stress are mysterious crop circles that appear in the cornfields and strange things that go bump in the night. Then come news reports of strange crafts in the sky and a fear that there may be an alien encounter and it may not be friendly.

Stylistically, the movie is brilliant. The aforementioned plot elements provide a fascinating setting for a film and work beautifully as a vehicle for suspense. The musical score is haunting. The cinematography is striking, as the most frightening elements occur off-screen, leaving the audience to imagine what is happening. Apart from the underlying Christian story, which I’ll get to in a moment, I want to explore two stylistic devices that can teach Christians filmmakers about communicating in a postmodern, post-Christian culture.

The first is believable characters. Based on criticism from his first two films, Shyamalan determined to craft characters who would be universal in their appeal. His next three films, all major releases — The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs — are basically character sketches stretched around supernatural ideas. The success of Signs has more to do with the way the characters become real in the minds of the audience than it does with our fascination with aliens.

Shyamalan understands that audiences no longer have a collective narrative — that is, a unified understanding of life — so he builds it for them. He gives his characters warmth and depth and real emotion, precisely what we need to connect with them. Unlike so many films — the action/adventure genre comes to mind — Signs doesn’t employ cardboard cutouts of people designed solely to get the viewer from one frenzied scene to the next. Graham Hess and his family are so deeply layered that we believe and identify with them. In fact, we don’t know what the characters will do in any given scene, but, after the fact, every action is seen as almost inevitable.

This is only possible, however, because of Shyamalan’s other stroke of genius: his pacing and use of silence.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times said it best: “In a time when Hollywood mistakes volume for action, Shyamalan makes quiet films. In a time when incessant action is a style, he persuades us to pay close attention to the smallest nuances.”

Shyamalan’s films are a backlash against the unending drone of image and sound that has increasingly come to define our existence. Silence is Shyamalan’s provocation for deeper reflection. The pregnant pauses and plodding plot development force us to really examine what is happening on the screen. In Signs, a narrative — a meta-narrative even — is communicated in the spaces where the sounds of explosions normally reside.

Silence is used so infrequently in films, I believe, because people find it uncomfortable. We don’t stop to smell the roses, much less to ponder the giant questions of life. Our culture revolves around things that medicate and distract us from asking these questions in the first place.

French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal sensed this more than a century ago. He wrote that all of man’s problems come from an inability to simply sit in a room. Or, to put it another way, we still struggle with God’s command to “Be still and know that I am the Lord.”

In his films, however, Shyamalan manages to still the audience long enough for some of them to slip into the possibility of knowing the Lord.

Graham’s loss of faith — and its impact on his family — is clearly the most powerful element in the story. Even so, it plays a subdued role, making it a perfect vehicle for engaging our post-Christian culture in the big questions of life.

The first mention of religion comes when Graham asks someone not to call him “Father.” He has not only shunned his call as a priest, but has also neglected his responsibility as a parent. At one point his son Morgan tells him, “I hate you.” In another, Morgan wishes Merrill were his real father. The tension between parent and child is beautiful in the most heartbreaking sense. This is real life, what people face everyday — and, sadly, have throughout time. Didn’t St. Paul in his letter to the Colossians admonish fathers not to embitter their children?

The distance Morgan feels toward Graham is the same distance Graham feels toward his heavenly Father. Graham’s loss of faith stems from God’s apparent inability or lack of desire to save his wife’s life and a very real feeling that no one is really watching out for him. Morgan feels that Graham has been absent since his mother’s death. He doesn’t trust his father for anything, even for keeping the chicken from burning on the grill. When the family dog attacks Bo, Graham is nowhere to be found. Morgan must kill the dog on his own.

Shyamalan’s wisdom is using a lapsed believer to raise the biggest theological questions plaguing people’s minds. Basically, is God real and, if so, can He be trusted?

This is ultimately a story about the workings of a God Christians know well. He works mysteriously, but he is both all-powerful and always good. That stands in stark contrast to many other world religions. Hinduism, Shyamalan’s religion of birth, involves a veritable circus of gods who are neither all-powerful nor even very good. They are capricious and, at best, may look favorably upon humans if provided the proper appeasement. Buddhism professes no belief in a deity, and thereby renounces any sense of hope.

Hope — or lack thereof — is a theme that dominates this film. When Merrill asks Graham for some words of comfort, Graham explains that there are two kinds of people in the world. There are those who believe in Someone up there watching over them, people for whom there are signs and miracles and no coincidences in life, and there are the rest who believe that the world is random and that good things simply indicate favorable luck.

“Deep down they feel that whatever happens, they’re on their own,” Graham explains of the second group. “And this fills them with fear.”

This dread inspires some of the most powerful moments in the film. When faced with almost certain attack by the aliens, Graham determines that everyone will enjoy their last meal. Like convicts facing execution, everyone picks his favorite dish. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

Contrast this with Christ’s Last Supper. He faced a similar situation, certain death, but met it with prayer and thanksgiving. Faced with the greatest possible ordeal, he trusted in the hope of things to come and the redemption of mankind.

Christians shouldn’t shy away from characters who doubt their faith. Even the most ardent Christians have struggled with doubt. The Psalms are full of David’s doubt and calling out to God for salvation. When we are honest about struggles in the faith, we shed the veneer of perfection that often distances us from other “sinners.” This is the point when real dialogue can begin.

Although the rest of the family always holds onto hope, Graham feels it only at the end. (Warning: Details of the ending follow.)

When standing face to face with the alien, his mind flashes back to his wife’s death. What appear to be her final words to him suddenly seem more like a prayer. She starts speaking to Graham and then suddenly addresses him in the third person, as if she has already begun to slip into the hereafter and is addressing her wishes to Someone else.

As the thought, “there are no coincidences,” runs through his mind, Graham is prompted by his wife’s words to notice a baseball bat in the corner next to his brother, an ex-baseball player who hit the longest home run in minor-league history. He remembers his wife’s last words for Merrill — “swing away”— and as Merrill does just that, pummeling the alien with the bat, Graham rushes Morgan outside and tries to revive his son from an asthma attack and poisoning by the alien.

At this point, Graham has regained his faith and is convinced there are no coincidences. He prays out loud (although not identifying the Lord by name) that the boy did not inhale any poison because his lungs were closed from an attack of asthma. When the boy awakes, he asks, “What happened? Did someone save me?”

“Yes, I think Someone did,” Graham answers.

When Graham puts on his collar again, his faith is secure in that Someone who saved his son, the same God who raised from the dead the widow’s son through Elijah and Jairus’ daughter though Jesus.

Shyamalan, as I said, isn’t a Christian; he was born Hindu, attended Catholic school and now seems to have a sort of hodgepodge theology. Yet God has a way of getting his messages through even to those who don’t know Him — and sometimes using them to pass those messages along. Sometimes God does this subtly; He revealed Himself to Moses in a whisper.

The context of any given situation determines how we strive to reveal God to others. As frequent Boundless contributor Roberto Rivera y Carlo said, “Film is a subtle medium. The best movies don’t beat people over the head. The best thing you can hope for is to open the door to conversation.”

Such subtlety fueled what is arguably the 20th century’s greatest work of fiction: The Lord of the Rings. J.R.R. Tolkien insisted that his book was not a Christian allegory as such, but the Christian themes are undeniable. Tolkien also maintained that the work could not be understood outside of his Roman Catholic faith.

Similarly, Shyamalan claims Signs is not about organized religion, but it clearly is inseparable from his Catholic upbringing. This explains the significance of water in the film. The death of the alien comes through its contact with water, a conscious nod to baptism through which he was taught sin and evil are conquered.

Certain themes are evident in all of Shyamalan’s films, namely, that there is more to life than what we generally see. Christians have a deep understanding of this reality. As Paul wrote in Romans, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

All M. Night Shyamalan did was to reveal these qualities through film.

Note: Neither Boundless nor its publisher, Focus on the Family, endorses films. We do, however, comment on aspects of them.