X FILES 2: A VIEWPOINT

Father Joe leads FBI skirmish line in quest for psychic clues in X FILES 2.

Without faith, where would we be now?

This film doesn’t embrace the issue od extraterrestrial beings in any of the X Files usual modes. It provides a barely noticeable “nod” toward the concept via a poster featured in Fox Mulder’s office, as well as conversational allusions here and there. The chief tie-in with the TV series, other than the stars, is the prominent featuring of “extrasensory perception” embodied in only one character, “Father Joseph Crissman” (Billy Connolly). There were a few characters who had an Earthly appearance that dovetailed approximately with the alleged appearance of extraterrestrial visitors; that is, they were baldheaded, had long, thin fingers, and “stick-out” ears.

This film was not focused too much on carnal romance, but there was an odd scene with Scully and Mulder in bed. Scully can’t sleep, and she and Mulder draw close to discuss what may be troubling her rest. I thought that it was odd that she barely ever looked at him, given their location and proximity. Bad breath?

Helping to distract moviegoers from the fact that there were no “sightings” and such, was the introduction of two subthemes. One involved a pedaphile priest (one can’t be too topical!) struggling with memories and urgings, trying to keep his faith going (movie theme), AND having paranormal “visions” of Earthly travail. The second subtheme involved Scully’s attempt to save a lad from a rare (what else?!!) and always fatal disease of the brain (Sandhoff), and getting little support from the hospital administration at Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital. The primary storyline involves the abduction of an FBI Agent from her abode in snowy West Virginia. Presumably she was one of the stalwart commuters who drive from Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and the Shenandoah valley (and the like) to their jobs in Washington, D.C.

The rendering of “Mulder” (David Duchovny) and “Scully” (Gillian Anderson) by their famed actors is tedious and portentous beyond reason. I had hoped for a dash of humor when first I saw Duchovny’s character, as he was bewhiskered and bore more than a passing resemblance to Robin Williams. While at this point, I might also say that Mulder is depicted as a very irregular type for an FBI Agent, as “brick-in the-wall” types seem to be de riguer there. The “book” rules. Hence, to give Mulder that “something else” quality, the moviegoer first sees him with beard and mustache, covering the entire lower face. Further, to help suggest ideosyncratic brilliance on Mulder’s part, his walls are literally covered with newspaper clippings. Shades of A Beautiful Mind ! This tie-in helps to draw the viewer to the position that maybe he is some sort of “genius,” abiding reclusively and “dwelling on things” that no man dreamed before. He is rejected by the ordinary because he is not ordinary. This brings us back to his unfortunately adversarial relationship with the FBI.

There is an unusual play on religion in this film. In most films out of Hollywood the stars may bear the name “Christian” and the movie may use the name “Jesus” several times as a substitute for a curse word, but rarely do moviegoers discover two characters bearing the name “Christian” and “Crissman.” The latter is usually pronounced so as to seem to be “Christman.” Further, there are numerous Roman Catholic priests and nuns stocking many scenes. Crosses and crucifixes adorn walls. At one point Farther Joe bleeds “tears” from his eyes, seemingly. Furthermore, in one bitter scene Scully blasts God for bringing little boys into the world and then giving them terminal brain cancer. This is the old argumentative inquiry: Why does God allow pain and suffering to fall upon His human creation, whether they be good or bad in their ways? For me it was surprising to witness the medically experienced Scully reverting to high school-type whining.

Additionally, in this film, as they leave off the heterosexual romancing so common in films today, they seem to attempt recouping their titillation quotient by introducing “buggering” by priests, same sex marriage, and “head” transplants. Crazy? In retrospect, yeah, it’s kind of nutty. [Mulder can tell his children one day: "I was bitten by a two-headed dog." His child may then ask: "Which head bit you, Daddy?" "Honey, I can't remember; it was dark."]

A caveat: some may be uncomfortable with this rather open delving into a subject that has proved to be the wrong kind of “revelation,” for Roman Catholic faithful. Still, even here the director & team try to suggest forgiveness and healing through faith. At one point or other, Mulder, Scully and Father Joe all say: “I want to believe.” Each has his/her own faith issue to cope with. In the battle against evil, everyone is an army of one.

The story opens near twilight on a snowy road in West Virginia, as a small car makes it way over a narrow, icy lane. The car is driven by a 30ish woman. She’s ”beaky” strawberry-blonde, Monica Banan (Xantha Radley [possibly a "stage name" for Pamela Adlon]), an apparently lean and possibly athletic gal. The vehicle pulls up to a fairly isolated abode, where the woman parks her car inside an attached garage. Now, as she does so, there is a brief camera cut to an FBI skirmish line in which the men hold long, slender poles to pierce the ground as they move over snowy, open terrain. Each strike of the sticks makes a sound like a tapping, or tolling, drum. At the head of this tight skirmish line are a couple of FBI Agents issuing orders, and a strange, bespeckled, older man, whose hair is long and flowing. He walks as if on a mission. There is a distracted quality, separating him from the others as they set forth. This is a very brief glimpse, and the camera returns to the woman, who is exiting her car. She notices “frosty breath” wafting from a hidden spot to the right into which she must turn to enter the abode. Then she notices a fresh shoe print across tiremarks in the snow. She knows that she is in danger. She secures a gardening claw from the wall and poses the instrument, defensely. Almost immediately she encounters two men who try to grab her. She “claws” one pretty hard on face and hand. Then she attempts to escape in the snow but is captured and carted. Once again, the camera cuts to the FBI skirmish line. Suddenly, the longhaired man speeds up then falls to the snow, digging with his hands while yelling “its here!” The FBI join in and assist in the dig. Soon, they uncover two male arms, which had been cut off at the elbow area (rather neatly). These two vignettes, though presented intercut, sre not occurring at the same time. The skirmish line is basically trying to locate her and help the “seer” see a vision of the abduction and subsequent events so that the FBI can possibly find Agent Banan alive. Hence, there is a sense of a vision occurring to the priest of the abduction, even as the skirmish line seeks her. 

The Big Capsule: After discovering the severed arms but not the abducted woman, Agent Banan, FBI Agents, led by ASAC Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet), decide that they need someone with peculiar skills–someone like fugitive former FBI Agent Fox Mulder–to deal with the oddball psychic, “Father Joe” (Billy Connally). Most of the FBI are uneasy about dealing with the serial buggerer, Fr. Joseph Crissman, who has made half the Irish lads of his parish walk funny. Dr. Scully, retired from the FBI also, is approached to find and team with Fox Mulder for one last FBI assignment. She resists taking the “dark side” but finally agrees to seek out Mulder, at least, as Agent Whitney indicates that the past is done, and Mulder need fear no arrest by the FBI. She drives to a rustic site, opens a gate, and drives a lengthy private country road to Mulder;s “hideaway.” Inside she discovers the fuzzy Mulder. Although his back is toward her, he reckonizes that it is Scully. They powwow, and Mulder agrees, buying into Scully’s “It could have been us,” argument, as well as the fact that a pedophile priest was the psychic leading the “vision quest.” Neither Mulder nor Scully are very confident about this priest’s abilities, and Scully is not only a nonbeliever but is contemptuous of the priest for buggering thirty-seven altar boys. Father Joe is presently at a holding center that works on the “honor” system and is comprised of several clustered dormitory-like facilities. He is debriefed and insulted by Mulder and Scully. Mulder, nevertheless, indicates some agnostic orientation in regard to the priest’s psychic abilities. After all, he might be legit. There are a few brief camera cuts to the captured Agent Banan, who seems to be kept in a box at perhaps a dog kennel. There is a cut or two to Scully at Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital, where she is trying to save “Christian Fearon” (Marco Niccoli) from terminal Sandhoff disease by means of a new experimental treatment, using “stem cells.” The hospital administration, dominated by Roman Catholic clergy, would prefer to transport him to a hospice where he will be comforted until succombing to death. This administrative group is led by lean, stick-out eared “Father Ybarra” (Adam Godley), whose point of view is “let’s free up the bed for a patient we may be able to help.” His lack of faith in Christian’s prospects contrast sharply with Scully’s “let’s try” experimental treatments. She has googled up a stem cell procedure occurring in Russia that seems promising. Fr. Ybarra thinks that it is wrong to put the boy through such a painful experiment. The procedure means a brain operation and injection of the stem cell material directly into the deteriating part of the brain. Why would it be very painful? you may ask, as the brain cells would feel no pain? Scully also believes that the treating doctor should have the last say. The debate about the source of stem cells for such usage isn’t broached, but I believe implied. Hence, the issue of Church vs. science is also implied. The camera cuts from the primary story allow the viewer to see the lad and witness the two sides argue their cases. Incidentally, at one point the lad, Christian, expresses fear to Dr. Scully about a man who “looks strangely at me.” The man turns out to be Fr. Ybarra. It is suspicious, but seems to be a false trail. It does serve to keep the issue of clergical pedophilia near the surface of the film. Proceeding with the main storyline, the viewer gets to witness a second woman (Nicki Aycox) abducted after a swim at an inside pool operated for members. The nabber predictably operates a pick-up truck, which he uses to force her off the snowy road where she wrecks. Muilder and the psychic priest have a couple of tete-a-tetes, where the credibility of the priest is an issue being tested by Mulder. He can’t prove or disprove the visions but knows that at least some things have–against all odds–proved correct. They go forth again and the priest is intentionally led to the wrong house, but then he startles them by saying, “No, you’ve taking me to the wrong place.” He gets out and wanders to another spot at a house nearby and declares, “This is the place they took her. Put her in a truck.” After bleeding tears from the eyes and finding a “stiff” frozen in ice, Mulder is definitely moving into Father Joe’s “camp following.” The good doctor is not buying into a “gifted” buggerer. The visions can’t come from God; therefore, they must come from the devil. There are opportunities to do some amateur speculation about God and His doings. Meanwhile, we’ve had the plot thicken as Dakota Whitney’s team at the FBI has dug up other materials on Father Joe’s victims and have established that one of the nabbers was a Russian who was part of an illegal body organ banking house. Not only that, he and his same-sex partner (married in Massachusetts) are tied in with Father Joe, because the Russian’s marital partner was one of the altar boys that the priest “backsided.” Hence, the bald-headed man on the Russian doctor’s surgical table is the “Altar Boy Bride,” now dying of lung cancer. He has AB-type blood, which is the type of the abducted gals. As the film progresses, Scully operates on Christian, while a Russian doctor and his team operate on various people, removing organs and such. At their “hospital” where they specialize in the doctor’s avant-garde head-transplant procedure, using stem cell material, a two-headed dog guards the entrance ways. [This suggests Cerberus, the mythic three-headed dog guarding the entrance to Hades (hell).] Agent Banan is in a cage and we get glimpse through her eyes via holes in her cage what’s happening. The viewer can see that the second abductee is being put on ice for a procedure that looks suspiciously like a head transplant. Is the Russiand planning to give his “wife” a real female body? What’s going on here? The “wife” has terminal lung cancer and must shed his body. Is medicine advancing or going “Frankenstein”? Mulder fights his way past “Cerberus” to interupt the procedure, and the Russian surgeon-genius was none too happy. However, Mulder is not alone. Good Dr. Scully walks in to save the chick in cold water. Folks, as “Oprah” watchers can tell you, “There’s so much confusion in the world.” Oh, along the way, Mulder comes clean, Scully professes her love, and it looks like Christian is going to go to treatment number two. Remarkably, Father Joe dies at precisely the same time as the “wife” does, as well as the exact time of the liberation of the second abductee. Chance? Scully and Mulder kick it around in a sort of brief epilogue. They divide on the issue in predictable Mulder-Scully fashion. Is this some sort of syndrome, too?

It’s best to try to see this flick in a silly mood.

All rights reserved. Gobigfoot, 2008.