The X-Files: I Want to Believe
Never a true X-phile during the show’s checkered 9 season run, I nonetheless found myself entertained by the series’ 1998 big screen venture “Fight the Future,” even though it delved deep into issues concerned in the thick mythology created by Chris Carter. I will eventually find myself knee-deep in the series’ nine year run via DVD, but for now I just have fond memories of episodes like “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space” and the like to go back to. The show set a template for many to come, including “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Alias,” “24,” “Lost,” and more recent ventures like “Bones” and “Torchwood.” Having been off the air for six years, how would Carter and co-writer Frank Spotnitz fare with their second film outing for Mulder and Scully?
Well, having already talk to a few fans (including my mother) about the film, my guess is that fans will be pissed. Pissed that the mythology was abandoned. Pissed that the film feels less like a film and more like an extended episode- and one that admittedly peters out by the end also (this one had both good and bad points for me). Pissed that we see nary a glimpse at what Mulder and Scully (whom David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson still invest with their trademark stoicism and by-play) have been up to for the six years since. Well, let’s just say that they’ll be pissed about damn-near everything about this movie.
Me? I’m looking forward to seeing it again, reveling in its’ mysteries, and considering its’ deeply provocative premise. As I was watching the film, I couldn’t help but think of how deeply ingrained in science fiction questions of faith and religion have been over the years. From “Star Wars” to “Metropolis” to “The Matrix” and “Dark City” to “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” filmmakers and authors have been intrigued by the existence of a higher power in one form or another, in a variety of forms. The concept of The Force in “Star Wars.” Neo being “The One” in “The Matrix.” The unseen intelligence that presents to man the monolith in “2001.” At its’ most fundamental level, “I Want to Believe” is another example of science fiction’s interest in a guiding spirit, albeit in a pulpier, more spelled-out way than most sci-fi tackles the subject.
It all starts with an attack at a home. Except what we’re seeing isn’t necessarily what happened, but the vision of what happened by one Father Joe (the intriguing Billy Connolly, with the funnyman building a sad portrait of undying faith and human flaw), a lapsed priest who is using his visions to guide the FBI towards clues that might lead to the rescue of the abductee in question, one of their own. In the cold, snow-covered ground near the crime scene, Father Joe leads them to clue #1…a severed arm. Except…it’s a male arm, not a female arm. Agent Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet…you notice how Chris Carter- who directs the film as well as co-writes with partner Spotnitz- like to cast against type) is someone who wants to believe Father Joe, even though her partner- the more straight-arrow Agent Drummy (rapper Xzibit, who looks too much like Terrence Howard to wonder how he could have made the role better)- is thinking she’s as crazy as he is. This leads them to Dana Scully, who they hope can convince her former partner Fox Mulder- still mourning the disappearance and eventual death of his sister, not helped by his forced ousting and disgrace from the FBI- to help them out.
Now a doctor at a religious hospital, Scully is embroiled in a rough case with a young boy whose rare disease might be curable through an experimental series of stem cell surgeries. The priest who serves as head administrator of the hospital wants Scully to have the boy moved to a hospice who can better care for what little life he has left; his parents later are inclined to agree. Compared to such conditions and choices, she finds herself engaged in the FBI’s case when Mulder agrees to help the Bureau out. But one meeting with Father Joe- now living at a halfway house for convicted pedophiles, and Mulder’s drive towards the truth and his faith in the otherworldly start to take their toll on the partnership, especially when a second abductee is discovered and it appears all is lost to finding the abducted agent.
Mood is everything in any good mystery, and any good “X-Files” especially. And the Toronto landscape the film (and much of the series) was shot in provides an ominous atmosphere, with the snow-covered ground looking strikingly stark in daylight, and even more unforgiving at night, where the generator-powered lights are as evocative as the breath seen coming out of the actor’s mouths, all enhanced by the reliably mysterious music by series composer Mark Snow. True, the story feels more episodic in nature than one would hope for a show whose scope was as ambitious as any other one in history, but since when did character-driven thrillers lose their place at the multiplex? (My guess- around the time Hitchcock died.) What the film lacks in size it more than made up for in smarts, as the film explores morality and faith in a way that doesn’t compromise the respect both subjects deserve, even if it is a kick to watch Mulder and Scully approach both in sometimes irreverent ways (Duchovny in particular gets off a couple of great one-liners). Sure, the plot loses steam by the last 20 minutes or so, when it becomes a more standard race-against-time movie, but like it or not, Carter doesn’t play it safe with his creation…no matter how much fans may want him to. I just hope they appreciate his risk-taking enough to merit another big-screen adventure with Mulder and Scully. Though Anderson and Duchovny occasionally feel uncomfortable in the roles that made them stars (they have been away for six years), they can rest assured that they didn’t sell-out their characters for the sake of big box-office bucks. Having now seen the film, I no longer want to believe in this franchise’s durability. I do believe in it, and the possibilities that lie ahead.
