K PAX

K PAX (2001 Iain Softley) is a film about a man so badly traumatised that he believes he is an alien who takes the name ‘Prot’ (Kevin Spacey). ‘Prot’ is committed to a psychiatric facility after being apprehended by the police after a crime of which he was not guilty.

The cause of Prot’s commitment to the psychiatric facility is somewhat weak. He just happens to be there when someone commits a crime in a train station. The police just happen to question him, and assume his insanity when he tells them he has come from another planet. Most cops would barely roll their eyes at that and go do something else.

In the facility, Prot is taken under the care of psychiatrist Dr Mark Powell (Jeff Bridges). Prot is so convincing as an alien that Powell starts to abandon his scepticism and think that just maybe Prot really is from the planet K Pax. But cracks appear in Prot’s charade, and eventually Powell uncovers the truth about Prot’s reality: he is in fact Robert Porter (Prot is the first four letters of the word Porter – geddit?) – a man who went through an extreme trauma when his family was attacked years earlier, and he killed the killer.

I narrate this well-known story only to point out an obvious way in which the film’s plot could have been so much stronger, as would its emotional firepower. Just before Prot is supposed to go back to K Pax, Powell goes back to the scene of Robert Porter’s (Prot’s) trauma alone. A cop tells him what happened, and Powell appears affected emotionally.

In this, the film makers missed a chance to make the story more powerful. If Powell had taken Prot back to the scene of his trauma as Robert Porter and Prot had a total meltdown there, we would buy into his character and care for him so much more. I suggest this happens just after Prot has (of course) failed to go back to K Pax. Prot’s meltdown reverts him to Robert Porter in my scenario, and puts him into a catatonic trance (not a coma, as in the film - a coma is something else entirely and is not caused by psychological trauma).

This is medically feasible. Revealing extreme trauma to those whose minds have deleted it from conscious memory can be extremely traumatic (ref HULK, 2003 Ang Lee). It would be plausible that this revelation puts Porter into a catatonic trance – but that it also begins to heal him: he might be brought out of his catatonia after a while and have transitioned in this way back to Robert Porter - his real self. Prot would be gone. Porter would then be cared for until he can rejoin life as a functioning human being - thanks to Dr Powell's dedication.

Instead of my alternative plot, Jeff Bridges is left trying to inject tragedy into the scene when he goes back to the place where Porter was so terribly traumatised when he killed after seeing his family killed. Even the great Jeff Bridges can’t turn this emotionally inert scene into the film’s powerhouse, which is what it would be if Dr Powell had taken Prot there – presumably against the wishes and orders if his boss, thus threatening Powell’s own livelihood, thereby telling us that he is willing to make this sacrifice for Robert Porter’s sake.

I don't think leaving Robert Porter in a coma/catatonia is a satisfactory end - do you?

K Pax is, I think, a fine film by virtue of the key actors’ performances, Softley’s pensive direction, and John Mathieson’s brilliant cinematography. I think it could have been better if the producers had made the plot choice I suggest here. What do you think? Let me know.

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