Hidden Truth/Hidden Truth.iso/data/xfiles/x-files3/lgm.rvw

Text File | 1996-09-22 | 11.6 KB | 214 lines

                         Humpty Dumpty

                       by Sarah Stegall

                copyright 1995 by Sarah Stegall

                      [e-mail]


              "You can't be afraid" -- Fox Mulder

     If I had to introduce a newcomer to this show, someone
who had no idea what the series was about or what its special
appeal was, this is the episode I would choose.  Everything is
here--the search for proof of alien contact, the heartbreak
over Mulder's sister Samantha, the understated sexual tension
between Scully and Mulder, the quest Mulder has set himself,
and the interference from the maddening Smoking Man and FBI
bureaucrats.  But most of all, we learn more about the
enigmatic Agent Mulder himself in this episode than in any
previous episode.  It was high time:  we'd learned the details
about Samantha Mulder's abduction in "Conduit", learned of
Scully's family life in "Beyond the Sea", even delved into
Deep Throat's shadowy past in "E.B.E.", but heretofore we had
not learned much about the man behind that badge.
     Mulder and Scully have been separated by the closing of
The X-Files.  Scully, attempting to maintain contact with her
former partner, meets him clandestinely in the Watergate
garage, where she finds a remote, depressed Mulder consumed
with self-doubt.  That night, Mulder wakes from a nightmare
replaying the events of Samantha's abduction and is
immediately hauled off to Capitol Hill to meet his mentor,
Senator Richard Matheson (Raymond J. Barry).  Matheson sends
him on a secret mission to Puerto Rico to recover evidence of
alien contact from a SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial
Intelligence) project at Arecibo.  Ditching Scully, he finds
the station and discovers evidence that aliens are
approaching, signalling from a location closer and closer to
the earth.  He discovers a terrified Puertoriqueno named Jorge
Concepcion (Mike Gomez), who babbles in Spanish about colored
lights in the sky and strange looking men.  When Jorge runs
out into a hurricane in a panic and is found dead of terror
twenty minutes later, Mulder begins to wonder if he really
wants to meet these aliens...and if they would really be there
if he saw them.  Some vision finally appears, and Mulder
discovers that he is afraid, and that he could not have saved
his sister anyway.  Scully arrives in time to save Mulder from
the retrieval team who will surely kill them both, and they
flee for their lives with only one tape left to prove his
story--a tape that later proves to be blank.
     Surely this is one of the most poignant "X-Files"
episodes ever filmed.  Fox Mulder has failed again.
     The overriding motif of this episode is Mulder's constant
failure to live up to the approval of the father figures in
his life.  Although at this point in the series all we know
about his father is that the family refused to discuss his
sister's disappearance, we may read something of the distance
that grew between father and son by the relationships he forms
with authority figures.  How confused can a man be who joins
the FBI, surely the most patriarchal of hierarchies, only to
rebel from within?  Does this career clash mirror an inner
conflict?  Mulder the psychologist, well versed in Freud, must
surely realize what he is challenging every time he
deliberately flouts the Bureau's rules and the authority of
his superiors.
     How devastating a loss Deep Throat must have been.  In
"The Erlenmeyer Flask", Mulder said out loud that he had been
"the dutiful son" to Deep Throat's "Obi Wan Kenobi".  He had
gone to and fro at Deep Throat's implied command, sniffing out
vague clues when even Scully, tirelessly loyal, had given up
in disgust.  He accepted the lies and misdirection of "E.B.E"
and yet held on to the relationship with Deep Throat.  Why?
Just for the information he was getting?  After "E.B.E", how
could he trust anything the man said?  Rather, what Mulder
needed was the reassurance of knowing Deep Throat's fatherly
figure was "watching from his lofty position" as Mulder
searched for the truth.
     Or is it the truth he is searching for?  As even Mulder
admits, there comes a time when anyone questions his innermost
motives; is Mulder looking for little green men, or a little
girl he lost long ago?  And while I might have trouble
believing a 34 year old man would still have any connection to
an eight-year-old sister he was last seen fighting with, I can
well believe that the real focus of Mulder's search is not
Samantha, but his unbroken family.  Samantha's disappearance
shattered the Mulders, and Fox Mulder will spend his life
trying to heal what cannot be mended.  I wonder if he realizes
how futile his quest really is.
     Although the flashback sequence contains several
discrepancies when compared with Mulder's earlier version of
events (the spelling of his hometown, the location of the
abduction, the date--which makes the children nine years and
thirteen years old, the Knicks jersey with the name of a
player who didn't make the roster for another 11 years), the
most important image is there--at a moment of supreme crisis,
when young Fox has one and only one chance to save his sister,
he fails.  He drops the gun.  He is hypnotized, paralyzed by
the Alien In the Doorway, whether by fear, wonder, or
telepathy we don't know.  From that one shattering moment
onward, his life is a desperate attempt to put it all back
together again.
     When "The X-Files" debuted, I was instantly suspicious of
Samantha Mulder.  I am always leery of the idea that a
protagonist has involved himself in a story only out of
personal involvement.  The cop who solves crimes only because
his father was a cop, the lawyer who takes a case only because
he passionately believes the defendant, the doctor who
attempts the risky but life-saving operation on his own
fiancee is a cliche of television.  It is an almost anti-
intellectual conceit, to think that people do not solve
crimes, try cases, or practice medicine out of sheer
curiousity or moral conviction.  So when we are told that
Mulder chases aliens not because the truth is out there (a
noble, dispassionate quest in the service of society) but
because he wants to find his sister and expiate his own guilt
(a selfish personal pursuit that does nothing for the society
that pays his salary), I get really skeptical.  Yet after this
episode, I can find myself in better sympathy with Mulder.  He
is not really looking for Samantha as much as he is seeking
what we all seek:  wholeness.  For whatever reason, wholeness
has forged itself into the shape of his lost sister; for
someone else, perhaps Scully, there might be some other worthy
icon that would serve as the focus of a life's pursuit.  But
for Mulder, who has no center, no root, no anchor for his
soul, his icon is Samantha, for good or ill.
     So when Senator Matheson, another father figure, gives
Mulder a mission that will bring back the evidence he has been
seeking, the joy and wonder on his face speak worlds.  This is
what Mulder needed, a King Arthur to send him on a knightly
quest, a chance to redeem himself and his cause.  To fail once
again in this mission is heart-rending.  How diligently he
searches for the father figure who will free him of guilt, who
will validate his search and heal his anguish.  So desperate
is Mulder for approval that he will give his loyalty to a
stranger standing in the shadows (Deep Throat) or a politician
with an agenda of his own (Matheson).
     Yet his resentment at carrying this burden of guilt shows
through in his problematic relationship with the one man who
stands in an obviously paternal relationship to him:  Walter
Skinner (Mitch Pileggi).  In "Little Green Men", Skinner
emerges as a true father figure, alternately scolding and
protecting his errant son.  Skinner's glare of defiance at the
Smoking Man's taunt tells him, "Mulder may be a son of a
bitch, but he's *my* son of a bitch."  In this, Skinner
combines the most destructive traits of the patriarch
(infantilism, dependence, arrogance, bullying) with the most
constructive (protectiveness, respect, and honor).
     I found myself almost weeping for sheer pity at the
conclusion of this masterpiece.  Mulder is a much more human,
much more believable character after we have seen his
nightmares, his failures, his shattered hopes.  I began to
wonder what steel was in this man to make him pick himself up
time and time again to go on in the face of repeated
humiliation.  This is a man doing penance for a lifetime,
earning a graduate degree in patience.
     No assessment of the story or subtext of this episode can
be divorced from an acknowledgement of the outstanding camera
work in "Little Green Men".  The writing is excellent, which
is the norm for Glen Morgan and Jim Wong.  But this is not a
novel, it is television, and the images before us tell us as
much or more than mere words.  David Nutter is unparalleled as
an interpreter of their work.  From repeated and exquisite
closeups that exploit the subtlety of Duchovny's work to the
balls-out downhill car chase in Act Four, his hand is as sure
as ever.  John Bartley's exquisite cinematography, from the
stunning close-ups that show us the awe and wonder on Mulder's
face as he meets his nightmare, to the off-road road race
Mulder engages in during his escape from the Blue Berets,
shows off the depth and artistry built into every episode.
One particular shot will stay with me always:  at the end of
the first act, as Senator Matheson is handing the printout of
the alien message to Mulder, he and Mulder are caught in a
close two-shot, filling the screen.  Mulder asks, "What am I
looking for?" and the Senator replies, "Contact" while
crossing behind Mulder.  The camera closes and holds on the
look on Mulder's face:  innocence, wonder, and a little fear.
Mulder has finally been handed his second chance, a way to
make it up to the Senator for letting him down earlier.  Here
he can start over, redeem himself, and maybe end his quest.
So when he still fails, the failure is even more touching,
more heartbreaking now that we know what is at stake.
     David Duchovny once more demonstrates his ability to let
the camera into his soul.  There is a lucidity about his gaze,
an accessiblity in the closeups, far more convincing than the
"actorly" portrayals we are used to on television.  There
seems to be no artifice, no impersonation in his portrayal;
his understated reactions show not only the emotions Fox
Mulder is suffering through, but his unsuccessful attempts at
repressing them.  Sometimes accused of wooden or obtuse
acting, Duchovny here demonstrates a fine touch under the
control of a first rate mind.   He simultaneously reveals and
conceals Mulder in an impressive and delicate exhibition of
his growing skill as an actor.
     As an exploration of character, this episode is
outstanding even by the elevated standards of "The X-Files".
It will take another classic to come even close to the sheer
pathos of Mulder's dilemma.  The only improvement that could
have been made would be to have featured Dana Scully more
prominently; after her strong and independent role in "The
Erlenmeyer Flask", it is a little disconcerting to see her
driven by lesser motives than Mulder.  Mulder is searching for
the truth "out there", she is searching for Mulder.  His
concern is for a mission with cosmic implications; hers is for
him.  It is a dropping back to the traditional motivations of
Milton:  "He for God, she for God in him."  I recognize that
Gillian Anderson's pregnancy probably dictated this lessening
of Dana Scully's usually solid presence in a story, but
perhaps it was appropriate that we take one episode for a
deeper look into the agonized soul of Fox Mulder.
     This one gets five sunflower seeds out of five.  Well
done, very well done.