PAST IMPERFECT? “I can’t look into the darkness with you anymore,” Scully tells Mulder in The X-Files: I Want to Believe.

THE X-FILES is back and it has a mission: it wants to believe. The problem with this goal is that when The X-Files reigned in the ’90s, it seduced us because it talked of events that taxed our logic and our capacity to believe. v Then was a different period; the millennium had not come down upon us. And the bug that was expecting to throw all our systems awry was formidable. Came then this TV program with two investigators seemingly born to be at odds with each other in terms of personal psychology. Dana Scully was the female half of the team: skeptic but with an elegant mind; Fox Mulder, he with the name that easily is almost near porn and near noir. It did help that Scully was played by Gillian Anderson, she with those piercing eyes, and Mulder by David Duchovny, the ultimate poster boy for anything that resembles the FBI and some such institutions.

Now, the two are back: Anderson as Scully and Duchovny as Mulder—the former even lovelier and the latter older and, it appears, more laid-back. The treat is that they are back with their director and series creator, Chris Carter. The trick is that this is not The X-Files that haunted our viewing times in the past. For the fans, therefore, this would be no pilgrimage to the same shrine, but a revisiting of the icons. The files about extraterrestrials are gone, almost discredited. The domain of the paranormal, which was the boon and the bane of the duo’s investigative profile, is peripheral.

The film opens with Scully, usually the person who got involved later in the earlier episodes, becoming the first person to know the case. There is a hitch in the person of Scully now: she is deeper in her engagement as a medical doctor and, at the moment, she is battling hyperreal situations in the form of a bureaucratic medical system. She is asked to help solve a case and the FBI is asking her once more to talk with her partner, Mulder.

Isolated, Mulder appears bearded and even more skeptical than Scully. Their case involves a missing FBI agent. Their clue comes from a priest, Father Joe. The priest is also a convicted pedophile. He sees visions and from there is able to track down corpses and clues.

The deal that the case against him would be dropped does not convince Mulder to end his isolation. Something moves him and soon he is out of the house and off goes also his beard (this quite much later in the film).              

The search for the missing persons continues. In between, we are shown a group hidden in the woods and this group is involved in organ transplant. Does the case have something to do with them?

Scully continues to doubt Father Joe while Mulder gets entangled in the case. The two talk about this fascination with the darkness, their former obsession. Scully moves in and out of the case—and the life of Mulder. There is a scene where the two are shown in bed. For the fans, this is more of a letdown as most of us loved then the sexual tensions between Scully and Mulder. We loved seeing them resolve cases but I doubt if we looked forward to having them resolve the sexual crisis that gripped them then.

Father Joe’s visions start to produce results—and blood. Yes, blood. At one point, Mulder sees the priest shedding tears of blood. Does this signify that the priest, sinner as he is, is the real deal?

This X-Files happens in the loveliest desolation of winter. The snow-covered roads and mountains are as much characters in this film that has its roots in science and criminal investigation, as the individuals figuring in their own barren desolation. It is a different pilgrimage path, a tad more religious than inquisitorial, more confessional than grilling. The fun of the “original” X-Files, which remains in our fan minds, is not here anymore. Then again, the world has changed.

Should we blame the director for altering our memories? Or, is this film one more for the memories?

I miss the science and illusion of the former X-Files, but I love the convolutions in this version. I also love how the notions of faith are vastly explored in the lives of the characters: mushy and sentimental, as well as gripping and cathartic.

The actors contribute greatly to this cinematic exercise. We are teased about notions of redemption (Shall the priest get it?) and transcendence (Why should I believe the visions of one who is a convicted bugger?). We are seduced about solutions through a different ideology.

“Do not give up.” This is the advice of the priest. Shall we believe it? Is he even part of the crime? By his own twisted personality, he is a true candidate for guilt rather than absolution. But then again, these questions do not really have a place in our recollection of X-Files, do they?

An attractive major character is added in this film: Dakota Whitney, played by Amanda Peet. I can almost imagine her playing an alluring third party to the unlikely love team of Mulder and Scully in the older episodes of X-Files. As Father Joe, Billy Connolly updates the crisis in X-Files as he allows us to judge him and the church he belongs to. The film, waylaid according to most fans and critics, remains the film of Dana Scully/Gillian Anderson and Fox Mulder/David Duchovny who retrace their paths and come out more on the feeling side. We loved them mysterious. We can try them now different, accessibly human.

One trivia: as Scully and Mulder enter the FBI office, they glance at the photos of Bush and J. Edgar Hoover. Is that a commentary about how easier it is to believe in the paranormal than in the normal elements of presidency and the CIA?

Frank Spotniz, who is the producer, shares the screenplay—and the guilt—with director Chris Carter. n

48 hours in Bohol

AS a tourist destination, no doubt Bohol’s numbers still compare poorly with, say, Boracay, Cebu or even Baguio. All that was known really of Bohol for the longest time were the Chocolate Hills, and, lately, those cute tarsiers endemic to the island.

LOST IN LAOS

Singapore and Hong Kong may be First World destinations but these places are the equivalent of a summer spent with a cross-stitching fanatic grandma.

Film Review: No chip off the old blockbuster

THE world may not want or need another Anakin Skywalker movie, especially one that looks as if it’s not quite a cartoon, not quite a Christmas special and not quite something panoramically painted on the side of a van. But there’s always room for another stoner movie, and I think Lucasfilm and Warner Bros. might want to market Star Wars: The Clone Wars as such, especially in this, the summer of stoner movies.

Reeling: Believing ‘The X-Files I Want To Believe’

THE X-FILES is back and it has a mission: it wants to believe. The problem with this goal is that when The X-Files reigned in the ’90s, it seduced us because it talked of events that taxed our logic and our capacity to believe. v Then was a different period; the millennium had not come down upon us.