Search - Sign From God on DVD

Only as Boring as The Viewer's Soul

langdonboom | New York, NY USA | 10/09/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Unfortunately, films that garner awards and are celebrated as `instant classics' these days tend to be the ones that are long on style and short on substance. Its true that film's visual sophistication increases with every passing year, but as dazzling as that gets, it has significantly outpaced our spiritual and emotional sophistication, resulting in a million `intelligent' films with all the flash and excitement of the 4th of July and about as much spirituality as a bottle rocket. So I don't totally blame the previous reviewer for his ignorant response -- however eloquent -- to what I feel is one of the most soulful and subtly brilliant American films of the new century. It is not quite his fault that he found this beautiful film "boring" - its similar to how a dog would find your favorite book. Not his fault. But not the book's either. Its also unfortunate that when a film takes for its subject the ever-troubling questions of life and how to live it - surely the most universally non-boring subject one could imagine - and commits the modern cinematic sin of employing distanced, even-handed, and meditative direction (and not ironic jokiness, flashy cuts, edits, stunts, or gore) to do it with, it is labeled `boring' by those preferring to be pumped full of sugary-sweet escapism to the detriment of their own spiritual evolution. A Sign From God is not an `easy' film - your pulse will not race, your eyes will not pop out of your head, but it might actually cause you to ask yourself things about yourself that one-liners, car chases, gunfights and [bad]women...could never begin to inspire. What do you believe in? Are you crazy for having faith in something larger or are you crazy not to? How much are you fooling yourself about your life and how much are you just doing what other people expect you should? Sure the production values aren't Bruckheimer-caliber, and sure there aren't any gunfights or explosions (though there is one car crash....) but this film is not for idly passing an evening with a bowl of popcorn. Its about looking deeply at life and really facing yourself, warts and all - if this is boring to you than perhaps you need to see more films by Greg Watkins and Caveh Zahedi."