K-PAX (2001)
Directed by Iain Softley
Prot is a patient at a mental hospital who claims to be from a far away planet. His psychiatrist tries to help him, only to begin to doubt his own explanations.
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18 films that influenced K-PAX
What critics say influenced K-PAX
The script, adapted by Charles Leavitt from a novel by Gene Brewer, concerns (as did Eliseo Subiela's 1986 "Man Facing Southeast") a fellow in a psychiatric hospital who claims to be a visitor from another planet (in this case one called K-PAX).
…lauded 1986 Argentinian film "Man Facing Southeast".
The question at the heart of the film -- is Prot really from another planet or is he just a terribly wounded man with a dark secret luring in his past somewhere -- is nothing new, and echoes of previous films which tackled or at least danced with the subject matter are readily apparent (the 1986 Argentine import Man Facing Southeast comes to mind, as does that other man, the one who fell to Earth and looked a lot like David Bowie).
That aside, the film is a thoughtful update of Eliseo Subiela's 1986 film Hombre Mirando Al Sudeste, or Man Facing Southeast, about a mental patient who claims he is from another planet and leads his psychiatrist and most of his fellow patients to believe him.
The film superficially resembles the well-regarded 1987 foreign film "Man Facing Southeast," but its similarities to "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "The Fisher King" and "Awakenings" run deeper, though those were all much better movies than this one.
It reminded me most of the 1986 Argentine film by Eliseo Subiela "Man Facing Southeast."
Will Prot help the other patients overcome their own problems, a la "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest"?
Clearly not satisfied with this corker of a storyline — one that could fill a whole tv series, never mind a movie — director Iain Softley inserts a One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest-type subplot in which Prot helps his fellow mental institutionees find help and redemption in quirkily unconventional ways.
An added wrinkle is that in his spare time Prot tries to mentally balance the other patients in his ward (the usual "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" knockoffs), an attempt that increasingly unsettles Dr. Powell.
Essentially a psychological detective story mixed with mental institution elements from previous pictures such as "Awakenings" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," the film is best when Spacey's Prot amusedly responds to Bridges' character doing the inquisitive psychiatrist bit.
There are obvious ties to "Starman" (starring, coincidentally, Jeff Bridges as the visitor from another planet) for the space alien perspective and films like "Awakenings" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" for the psychiatric institution viewpoint.
These are the typical patients one finds in films like "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "28 Days," etc.
But anyone who has seen any of this movie's uplifting-but-so-sad prototypes -- be it "The Fisher King" or "Awakenings" or any of a dozen other movies preaching a sermon of love, peace and harmony and indulgence of weirdos -- will already know the answer.
There are obvious ties to "Starman" (starring, coincidentally, Jeff Bridges as the visitor from another planet) for the space alien perspective and films like "Awakenings" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" for the psychiatric institution viewpoint.
Toss in a little Awakenings, a little Starman (including Jeff Bridges--not the spaceman this time), and a little Hollywood preachiness, and you've got yourself K-PAX.
Countless benign alien, doctor/patient, fish-out-of-water and asylum movies all come to mind: "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Awakenings," "City of Angels," "The Muse," "E.T.," "Starman" and far too many others to list.
The film superficially resembles the well-regarded 1987 foreign film "Man Facing Southeast," but its similarities to "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "The Fisher King" and "Awakenings" run deeper, though those were all much better movies than this one.
After the director's last film - the clinical, emotionally eviscerating trauma of "The Wings of a Dove" - it's as if he has decided to go to the other extreme, presenting a naive, touchy-feely fable, a blend of "Starman" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", by way of "Awakenings".
Think of Jimmy Stewart's remarkable performance in "Harvey" in 1950.
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He spends most of the rest of the movie in the mental hospital interacting with the various stock neurotics, psychotics, and such, while slowly convincing his overworked and generally unhappy (of course) psychiatrist (Jeff Bridges, who played the alien-on-earth before in 1984's Starman ) that he may in fact be an alien.
If this is beginning to sound like a combination of "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" (1975), and "Starman" (1984), which also starred Bridges, you're on the right track.
There are obvious ties to "Starman" (starring, coincidentally, Jeff Bridges as the visitor from another planet) for the space alien perspective and films like "Awakenings" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" for the psychiatric institution viewpoint.
Toss in a little Awakenings, a little Starman (including Jeff Bridges--not the spaceman this time), and a little Hollywood preachiness, and you've got yourself K-PAX.
He did well playing a variant of Spacey's character back in 1984's "Starman," but on the other side of the desk he's simply dull.
This is science fiction without all the special effects, sort of like the old film starring David Bowie "The Man Who Fell to Earth."
What if, in Ordinary People, Timothy Hutton were secretly an alien?
Stuck in a mental ward with the usual psychiatric suspects -- the obsessive-compulsive mouse (David Patrick Kelly), the Miss Havisham-ish old lady (Celia Weston), the germophobe (''Slam'' poet Saul Williams) -- none of whom have any problem with the notion that their new neighbor really is an extraterrestrial, Prot becomes their leader.
While Mary McCormack ("The Big Tease," "Private Parts") doesn't get enough time to do much with her somewhat disgruntled wife character and Alfre Woodard ("Mumford," "Down in the Delta") and other performers inhabit characters that seem likely to have been fleshed out more in the novel, David Patrick Kelly ("Songcatcher," "Dreamscape"), Saul Williams ("One True Thing," "Slam") and Celia Weston ("Hearts in Atlantis," "Hanging Up") are all good as some of the mental patients Prot encounters.
Saul Williams ("Slam") is Ernie, a patient with a phobia of air contaminants who always wears a surgical mask and latex gloves, almost normal behavior in these times.
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But anyone who has seen any of this movie's uplifting-but-so-sad prototypes -- be it "The Fisher King" or "Awakenings" or any of a dozen other movies preaching a sermon of love, peace and harmony and indulgence of weirdos -- will already know the answer.
The helmer of Backbeat, Hackers, and The Wings of the Dove paints Charles Leavitt's overly sentimental study of the human condition (based on a book by Gene Brewer) with broad references to The Fisher King (also borrowing that film's co-star Jeff Bridges), another compassionate, humorous glimpse of the thin line between sanity and insanity.
The film superficially resembles the well-regarded 1987 foreign film "Man Facing Southeast," but its similarities to "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "The Fisher King" and "Awakenings" run deeper, though those were all much better movies than this one.
Movies about delusionals are not new (Bridges himself once starred in the similarly-themed The Fisher King), but K-Pax is one of the few that really works.
So the "mean minority" cops haul Prot off the the loony bin that apparently went to the yard sale of Terry Gilliam's where he was trying to sell off his mental hospital stock characters from The Fisher King and 12 Monkeys.
And what Iain Softley, who directed the gritty early-Beatles bio "Backbeat" and the excellent, earthy Henry James adaptation "Wings of a Dove" is doing on this paint-by-numbers kit I have no idea.
The helmer of Backbeat, Hackers, and The Wings of the Dove paints Charles Leavitt's overly sentimental study of the human condition (based on a book by Gene Brewer) with broad references to The Fisher King (also borrowing that film's co-star Jeff Bridges), another compassionate, humorous glimpse of the thin line between sanity and insanity.
His debut, the Beatle bio "Backbeat," as well as the more recent "The Wings of the Dove" also showcased the value of keeping potentially overwrought situations in check.
On paper, it must have looked great – a film starring both Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges, two of America’s best actors, working together for the first time and directed by a reliable director in Iain Softley (who made Backbeat and The Wings of a Dove).
It is based on a novel by Gene Brewer and written by Charles Leavitt, and directed without courage or much imagination by Iain Softley ("Backbeat"/"Hackers").
That's more than can be said for the fashionably brooding direction (by Iain Softley, of BackBeat and The Wings of the Dove) and the each-revelation-in-its-place script by Charles Leavitt (by way of Gene Brewer's novel), both working overtime to strike a balance between the fantastic and the realistic.