The X-Files flirts again with the Lord of the Flies..( I should resist the dyslexic pun : The Lord of the Files) -- this to the disappointment of some of the audience whom I heard muttering : "There Were No Aliens" ....
Many of the more than 200 episodes of this series which were for several years my only connection to the un-reel world of television-[ having no such machine in my home I was fortunate to be invited ,often,on Sunday evenings , to a friends home to watch the show]- were thematically about human alienation , deviance , freakishness and , why not say the word : Evil.
Indeed , part of the shows mystery was it's continuous probing of the reality of Aliens as they live amongst us , Alien - Humans , those homegrown on our world.
I was therefore neither surprised nor disappointed. The film was not an over dramatic exposé of some of the more intangible and painful aspects of human lived experience-- rather it was carefully understated . ( This I say , despite the gore which was carefully served up for the audiences horrification ). It was also mercifully devoid of the special effects overdose which films have much of these days. It stood firmly in the tradition of the x-files series in that it raised more questions than it answered, leaving loose ends galore and sparing us none of the horribleness mixed with wonderment that much of life paradoxically presents us with , every day.
There was no great novelty in this film, I will grant you this. But that was part of the point of making the film.. Chris Carters obsession , with evil and suffering , which I share in my own limited way, is suitably realistic .By this I mean : the fact that Evil is in some ways very unimaginative and thus repetetive, as in a sense the original Show was , is part of it's somewhat banal reality, to paraphrase the Jewish Philosopher Hannah Arendt . Because the Devil is in the Details, the sameness within many episodes and within the film loses it's importance...because it is with the differences of detail that the Devil fascinates and distracts us..
or, dare I ask : is it God ?
Human organ harvesting and pedophilia , both subjects which till recently were sufficiently Taboo to be avoided by most Directors are bravely mingled in a plot which sports a fair amount of Freudian allusions to the innocence of children and to the ways in which we fill our inner voids with searches for the unfindable , undefinable and the unattainable.
Dana Scully complains to her partner and intellectual opposite that she is tired of looking into the darkness...She hopes they can close the book on this - with usual aplomb Mulder responds :
" I don't think it works that way , I think the Darkness finds you "
Of course , as the title states, the film is all about faith, about wanting to believe. Both Scully and her Lover are sorely tested. As within the T.V. Series Mulder ' s Belief system is tested by the frustration of never quite getting tangible proof with which to clobber his detractors--and Scully is frustrated because her skepticism is never given the full satisfaction of reason. The duality , if it should be ever resolved would perhaps ruin human experience...Within the rationality of one the kernel of faith never ceases to germinate...and within the belief system of the other the seed of doubt forever finds a small nook or cranny within which to grow.
Is God using Evil , as the Pedophile tragic anti-hero feels ? Or is Evil, the omnipresent force within and without , playing with us, toying with our desires, one of the strongest of these being our desire to believe.
Certainly Chris Carter does not have a simple answer. I fear he would cease making films if he did...
The minuscule gold cross which was a frequent appearance around the neck of our loverly heroine in the X-files shows, seemed absent in this film, but she carried it nonetheless...At the end of the narrative , against a backdrop of three nuns she performs an Act of Faith that may be as cruel as the act of scientific brutality which the faceless villains ( Russians, no less ) perform throughout the story. It is however , qualitatively different , infused with love.
( How I have missed you Scully, the tenderness you represent. -- Ok, I forgive you Gillian Anderson, for not really being Scully and for actually having a life outside of the television set... I admit it , you have long been an inspiration and the source of a few wicked dreams to this poor soul. )
If there is a moral to the story , then, it is perhaps this : that it, the story , never ends. As the very last scene makes explicit, we are all very much at sea on very small boat.
Although, we seem if (Dana and Mulder are seen as our representatives ) to have a couple of oars.
At least for now.
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Many of the more than 200 episodes of this series which were for several years my only connection to the un-reel world of television-[ having no such machine in my home I was fortunate to be invited ,often,on Sunday evenings , to a friends home to watch the show]- were thematically about human alienation , deviance , freakishness and , why not say the word : Evil.
Indeed , part of the shows mystery was it's continuous probing of the reality of Aliens as they live amongst us , Alien - Humans , those homegrown on our world.
I was therefore neither surprised nor disappointed. The film was not an over dramatic exposé of some of the more intangible and painful aspects of human lived experience-- rather it was carefully understated . ( This I say , despite the gore which was carefully served up for the audiences horrification ). It was also mercifully devoid of the special effects overdose which films have much of these days. It stood firmly in the tradition of the x-files series in that it raised more questions than it answered, leaving loose ends galore and sparing us none of the horribleness mixed with wonderment that much of life paradoxically presents us with , every day.
There was no great novelty in this film, I will grant you this. But that was part of the point of making the film.. Chris Carters obsession , with evil and suffering , which I share in my own limited way, is suitably realistic .By this I mean : the fact that Evil is in some ways very unimaginative and thus repetetive, as in a sense the original Show was , is part of it's somewhat banal reality, to paraphrase the Jewish Philosopher Hannah Arendt . Because the Devil is in the Details, the sameness within many episodes and within the film loses it's importance...because it is with the differences of detail that the Devil fascinates and distracts us..
or, dare I ask : is it God ?
Human organ harvesting and pedophilia , both subjects which till recently were sufficiently Taboo to be avoided by most Directors are bravely mingled in a plot which sports a fair amount of Freudian allusions to the innocence of children and to the ways in which we fill our inner voids with searches for the unfindable , undefinable and the unattainable.
Dana Scully complains to her partner and intellectual opposite that she is tired of looking into the darkness...She hopes they can close the book on this - with usual aplomb Mulder responds :
" I don't think it works that way , I think the Darkness finds you "
Of course , as the title states, the film is all about faith, about wanting to believe. Both Scully and her Lover are sorely tested. As within the T.V. Series Mulder ' s Belief system is tested by the frustration of never quite getting tangible proof with which to clobber his detractors--and Scully is frustrated because her skepticism is never given the full satisfaction of reason. The duality , if it should be ever resolved would perhaps ruin human experience...Within the rationality of one the kernel of faith never ceases to germinate...and within the belief system of the other the seed of doubt forever finds a small nook or cranny within which to grow.
Is God using Evil , as the Pedophile tragic anti-hero feels ? Or is Evil, the omnipresent force within and without , playing with us, toying with our desires, one of the strongest of these being our desire to believe.
Certainly Chris Carter does not have a simple answer. I fear he would cease making films if he did...
The minuscule gold cross which was a frequent appearance around the neck of our loverly heroine in the X-files shows, seemed absent in this film, but she carried it nonetheless...At the end of the narrative , against a backdrop of three nuns she performs an Act of Faith that may be as cruel as the act of scientific brutality which the faceless villains ( Russians, no less ) perform throughout the story. It is however , qualitatively different , infused with love.
( How I have missed you Scully, the tenderness you represent. -- Ok, I forgive you Gillian Anderson, for not really being Scully and for actually having a life outside of the television set... I admit it , you have long been an inspiration and the source of a few wicked dreams to this poor soul. )
If there is a moral to the story , then, it is perhaps this : that it, the story , never ends. As the very last scene makes explicit, we are all very much at sea on very small boat.
Although, we seem if (Dana and Mulder are seen as our representatives ) to have a couple of oars.
At least for now.
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