Sign

Yakub Saputra

Year Released: 2002

Director:
M. Night Shyamalan
Composer: James Newton Howard
Pretty Woman
The Sixth Sense
The Dark Knight
Hunger Games
Plot Summary
Graham Hess, a pastor who just endures a loss of his wife on a
car accident, lives with his son, daughter, and brother. They are
shocked by an appearance of a crop circle in his field. Despite being
skeptical that it is an extraterrestrial activity, similar news from all over
the world convinces them. Graham also makes an encounter with one
the alien in the house of the person who caused the accident resulting
on his wifes death. After their television signal drops out, they all lock
the entire house, until they believe that the alien has managed to get
into the house, they hide in the basement. In the morning, they goes
out of the basement believing that the alien has gone, only to find the
alien grabbing his son. They win the fight killing the alien.
Music in the Film
James Newton Howard in this score uses a full orchestra,
although many times he tries to create a more chamber sounding
especially in couple of strings cue. He uses a wide range of harmonic
palate. On emotional scenes he uses tonal melodies, and as a
counterpart, on a more perplexing scene, he writes more and more a
chamber sounding dissonance cue. Like many of his scoring with M.
Night Shyamalan, in this project, the film is rather quiet throughout.
One can assume, up to 45% of the film does not have music set. One
of my personal favorite cue is The Hand of Fate, where is starts off
sounding like minimalism music of Phillip Glass, which slowly grows
with pivoting harmony over the ostinato pattern. Later it transform into
a more developed melody while being faithful with the ostinato. This
particular cue is well summarized the whole scoring concept of the

movie. It gives you a sense of perplex, wary, restless which later can
juice out a melody of warmth, hope, and faith. Overall, it is very
effective score and one of my all time favorites.