Movie Review: The X-Files - I Want to Believe - Page 2

When women go missing under circumstances bordering on the outré, Mulder is reluctantly forgiven for his bureaucratic transgressions and is brought into the cold case to heat up some leads. Scully is enlisted to bring the bearded Mulder out of seclusion, but he will only take the case if she joins him. Like Dr. Watson to Sherlock Holmes, she is the whetstone for his mind; and much more, but you will need to see the movie to find out.

Putting aside his tabloid clippings of three-headed alien babies and Loch Ness Yeti monsters flying UFOs, he is soon back to butting heads with the bureau's disbelief in Father Joe's (Billy Connolly) visions, and Scully's determination to save a young boy, who is terminally ill, at the expense of helping him with the case. With Father Joe a convicted pedophile, and Scully reluctant to return to "chasing monsters in the dark," Mulder has his work cut out for him, even if the agent in charge, Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet), believes in him.

Both Duchovny and Anderson once again generate the chemistry that made the television show an engrossing excursion into the unknown every week. The isolation inherent in the expansive, snow-covered countryside evokes a mood of unknown evil quietly afoot, ready to reach out at any moment. Much of the action emanates from the interactions between Mulder and Father Joe, Scully and Father Joe's confrontations, and the stubbornness of disgruntled FBI agents paying lip service to Mulder's unwanted involvement. There is a simplicity and directness to the way everyone talks to each other. Like the police procedural Dragnet series with Jack Webb, the dialog is believable, always to the point, and carefully measured for its implications as well as its revelations. Each scene is also executed in a way that always seems to best fit its purpose. Look for the spiraling downward crane shot perspective often used in the television series.

In the opening montage we are shown an earlier abduction taking place, intertwined with flash-forwarded scenes of a clearly discernible line of black-uniformed FBI agents searching through a pristine white field as Father Joe's vision leads them to an arm buried in the snow. It is clear whose arm it is from the earlier abduction; what is not clear is why and how it got there.

Why and how and belief are important themes in the X-Files series overall, of course, but they especially come to the forefront here to help us define everyone's motivations in this movie, forcing us, along with them, to question how we would respond if faced with such events. Father Joe does not know why he "buggered thirty-seven altar boys," as Scully acidly puts it, and he wonders how God can forgive him when he cannot forgive himself. He desperately needs to believe his visions are sent by God as atonement for his sins. Scully does not understand why God would let a boy die, yet go out of his way for Father Joe. How fair is it that God gives a man like him priority over the life of her young patient? She desperately needs to believe she can save the boy, but not even his parents or anyone else believe she can. That's the challenge of faith: you must take it whole, in one big gulp; there are no taste samples for it and it is a meal for one. Mulder's faith is based on seeing how events really happened, but he can never really say why they happened. He keeps doggedly searching for that answer, even if Scully is the only one who realizes it.

Article Author: ILoz Zoc

Founder of the League of Tana Tea Drinkers (LOTT D), expiring writer of Zombos Closet of Horror Blog, and valet to Zombos, the noted B-movie horror actor (to his few remaining and decaying fans).

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