Something happened while I watched this episode as it drew near its end: I started crying uncontrollably. This is not a review as such but my own feelings regarding the episode and I don't know whether IMDb will even permit it to appear, nevertheless I could not help not writing this. This episode concerns death and how the bereaved deal with that of a loved-one. This one brings us back to the X-files mythology about the disappearance of Mulder's sister, Samantha. In the entire series heretofore, Mulder has fought valiantly and tirelessly trying to excavate the truth regarding Samantha's being or otherwise, and all that is brought to a grand closure herein.
Samantha is dead, was dead, a long time back. Something tells me Mulder knew this all along, but could not accept this horrifying truth and resumed his quest; he could not let go of her, her memories, his past. This is something he learns at the episode's end and at last, is 'free'.
I don't know what exactly this episode touched in me; the writing, the performance of Duchovny or the direction (The entire sequence of the walk-in of the children's' souls was one of the best scenes in drama I have seen) or that the fact that it (death) is a thing that affects all of us in some point in our lives and is a part of existence in this universe but I have not lost someone I love dearly, so to speak, as of yet. And yet I found myself crying like a baby as I finished watching this. Maybe that's what pure beauty does to you. 'CLOSURE' is indeed a resplendent exploration of a possible after-life which stays with you long after you get back to your routine life. While I don't agree with everything that's shown, but then, who has seen an afterlife, if there is any such thing? What the episode does is what all great art is meant to: to explore a thing in a way that was not thought hitherto and to breathe life into it; such waking life that somewhere it tends to become the truth, a truth which we believe in spite of ourselves.
Samantha is dead, was dead, a long time back. Something tells me Mulder knew this all along, but could not accept this horrifying truth and resumed his quest; he could not let go of her, her memories, his past. This is something he learns at the episode's end and at last, is 'free'.
I don't know what exactly this episode touched in me; the writing, the performance of Duchovny or the direction (The entire sequence of the walk-in of the children's' souls was one of the best scenes in drama I have seen) or that the fact that it (death) is a thing that affects all of us in some point in our lives and is a part of existence in this universe but I have not lost someone I love dearly, so to speak, as of yet. And yet I found myself crying like a baby as I finished watching this. Maybe that's what pure beauty does to you. 'CLOSURE' is indeed a resplendent exploration of a possible after-life which stays with you long after you get back to your routine life. While I don't agree with everything that's shown, but then, who has seen an afterlife, if there is any such thing? What the episode does is what all great art is meant to: to explore a thing in a way that was not thought hitherto and to breathe life into it; such waking life that somewhere it tends to become the truth, a truth which we believe in spite of ourselves.