What would you eat as your last meal?
In M. Night Shyamalan’s SIGNS, there’s a scene where Graham (played by Mel Gibson) and his family barricade themselves in their house for what they are suspecting may be their last night before the end of the world. Bo (Abigail Breslin) asks for spaghetti, Morgan (Rory Kulkin) requests French toast with mashed potato, Merril (Joaquin Phoenix) chooses Chicken Teriyaki and Graham tells them that he’s going to make a cheeseburger with bacon. Then he smiles to himself, “…extra bacon”.
It’s a scene I’ve always remembered from one of my favourite films. Like everyone’s favourites, SIGNS has always been a comfort watch of mine. A film I switch on when the world around me starts getting scary or at times when my life doesn’t make sense.
So, a couple of weeks after my wife passed away from breast cancer, I turned to this movie. But what I didn’t expect was seeing it from a perspective that differed from the previous times.
The film is set with Graham as a widower, who used to be a Reverend. His wife was killed in a car accident. So, he’s having a crisis in faith and been left to raise their two children and deal with a possible alien invasion. It opens with Graham waking up in his bed alone after hearing a spooky noise. He walks around the house, picking up his daughter’s toys, mopping up dog urine on the floor.
Bo asks her father why he talks to her Mum when he’s by himself.
He replies, “Because it makes me feel better.” Then she asks, “Does she ever answer?” He responds, “No”.
As the late Roger Ebert said – movies are empathy machines. As a widowed father of two, I myself am waking up every morning in a bed alone. For the past few years, I’ve been managing our family life, trying to help our children continue with their lives and understand the world as it gets crazier and more chaotic. Picking up and cleaning after the children while murmuring words to myself that I hope my late wife, Liza, can hear. No answer though.
He may be problematic, but Mel Gibson is exceptional as Graham. There’s something about the way he stands and walks – it’s like there’s a weight on top of his body that’s making him hunch. His resting face is full of defeat and loss. Compared to his charming and effusive performance (only a couple of years before) in What Women Want feels like night and day.
There’s a scene where his son is having an asthma attack in the basement while they believe aliens are laying siege to their house. Graham holds onto his son, at first begging God to not take another person he loves but then grows such anger in his eyes when he says to thin air, “I hate you!”
In an earlier scene, Graham explains to Merril that there are two groups of people – one group believes that things happen for a reason and there’s an unseen, higher power creating circumstances for a reason. The second group thinks that whatever happens chalks down to luck. It may be good or bad, but the lack of this certainty makes them feel alone.
Liza was one of the most pious people I knew and will ever know. She had such strong faith that even her non-Muslim friends would come to her for spiritual guidance. She changed my life and made me understand the concept of fate – that things happen for a reason.
But every day I am finding it hard to comprehend that this same divine power would have made brought such pain to the same person who showed such devotion to God. That cruel and merciless power made our children lose their mother when they were at such a young age. Whenever I get down on my knees on the prayer mat, like Graham, I feel angry at the one force that was responsible for giving her that disease. If things do indeed happen for a reason, I’m still searching for the signs.
That’s why I still regularly rewatch the film -to contemplate which group of people I fit into. But also, it’s still a comfort watch for me… which takes me back to the question…
What would you eat as your last meal?
