K-Pax review

 Number 965 on the top 1000 films of all time is the science-fiction film K-Pax.

Prot (Kevin Spacey) claims to be an alien visiting earth from the planet K-Pax, while manifesting in the form of a human male. Upon his arrival in New York, he is quickly remanded to a psychiatric facility. Where he comes into the care of Dr Mark Powell (Jeff Bridges.) Dr Powell is determined to prove Prot a liar, but he is confronted with increasingly convincing evidence.

Kevin Spacey has undoubtedly become a problematic figure, but there is no denying that he was one hell of an actor. By the time he filmed K-Pax, he had already won acting Oscars for the Usual Suspects and American Beauty. He brought the full force of his acting skills to this role too. As far as aliens go, Prot is a little bit like a Vulcan - observing the customs of humans with a scientific curiousity, and, at times, a quiet exasperation. If Dr Powell asks him whether he has K-Pax equivalent of a human custom, Prot will rationally explain why something like that would be nonsense.

In the hands of a lesser actor, these explanations would sound like rubbish, but Spacey pulls off the awkward dialogue with finesse. And even a bit of humour. For a science-fiction film, there were a lot of jokes and Spacey played them well. As well as making us laugh, he pulled at our heart strings too. To unlock the truth, Dr Powell hypnotises Prot and discovers that Prot - or at least the human form he is assuming - was once known as a man called Robert Porter who worked in an abattoir. His wife and daughter are raped and murdered by a paroled convict. In his grief, Robert kills the murderer. To protect his fragile state of mind, he creates a delusion of being an alien from K-Pax. Spacey was brilliant in these scenes. 

Jeff Bridges was great too - often playing the Dr Bones to Spacey's Spock. And as he becomes more obsessed with the case, his relationship with his family becomes strained. Bridges plays a man caught between two worlds. But like Spacey, he plays the comedy well, often acting as the straight man.

A lot of science-fiction films that deal with big philosophical themes tend to be self-indulgent and pretentious, *cough  cough* 2001: A Space Odyssey, as they try to prove how clever they are. K-Pax was nothing like this. It was a simple and straightforward plot. There wasn't anything pretentious about it. Rather than vaguely answering big questions, it hyper-focussed on what it means to be human.

And was Prot really an alien or a delusional human trying to survive a severe trauma? Like any good science-fiction, it doesn't tell you what to think, but lets you make up your own mind. Personally, I think that Prot and Robert Porter had a symbiotic relationship. Prot needed a human host and Porter needed a reason to not be himself anymore. But what do you think?