MovieChat Forums > K-PAX (2001) Discussion > So Prot was really a ? ...... (Spoilers)

So Prot was really a ? ...... (Spoilers)

posted 11 years ago by AlexanderVsSupertramp
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Just finished watching this .The movie has all the ingredients of getting a 10/10 .Really fantastic job by both the actors (Jeff Bridges steals the show from Spacey in my opinion) .... a highly refreshing story about so called 'monotonous lives' we live as humans ignoring true happiness(like watching a blue jay in the middle of the day, a scene which really lifts the movie nicely) and our families .... BUT ... what lacks is that in the end the movie doesn't quite hold up its mark because of overly ,almost intentionally, trying to be AMBIGUOUS ...
up until the end its almost certain that prot is an alien because :

1. correctly describes the dynamics of a planet in a constellation which has been discovered only recently .Well he could be brainy and savant in astronomy(which already is almost impossible for a knocker in a slaughter house) as Jeff's character says but still he couldn't possibly be knowing this much about a planet whose existence is still in questions among the leading astrophysicists of the country.

2. doesn't respond to 300 mg thorazine

3. detects UV light that is impossible for a human being

4. Bess's disappearance in the end (and leaving her shoes behind which she definitely would have needed if she were to escape from the hospital)

5. banana CHOMP CHOMP in the beginning ....

HOWEVER there are various interchange of dialogues between prot and Dr. Mark which (figuratively) try to make us believe of him being an human....

1. prot saying that on K-PAX they don't have families and when asked by Rachel if he has a family he becomes a bit sad and says no ....both the instances implying the loss of family he(or Robert Porter if prot's not Robert) witnessed in life

2. prot telling how pregnancy is a painful thing on K-PAX ... during hypnosis prot says that pete (or robert porter) called him only when there's a problem .... and he once called him during his girlfriend's pregnancy and Mark saying that "does he blame her for this" ..... implying his girlfriend's pregnancy was some kind of a problem .....

3. prot becoming violent hearing the lawn sprinkler scene .... if he was just an alien and had taken over robert's body when he was going to kill himself in the river then he couldn't have known about robert seeing the lawn sprinkler after the horrid incident ....

4 . prot showing human emotions ...... extreme human emotions like fear and anxiety during hypnosis but being almost normal afterwards not knowing anything about the session .... a common thing observed in psychotic patients ...

5. prot saying there's no law or government needed in his world (K-PAX) .... this almost relates to the fact that his wife and children were killed by a lunatic criminal on loose which he probably thinks was a mistake of police(law) and so he took laws into his own hands(no need for law or government in his world)by killing the guy who killed his family......

6. the fact that 'prot' is jumbled form of 'port' from Robert [PORT]er ..... lol

So what does these things mean?? ... what exactly was prot ?? .... human or alien ????

[–] TheAstor 10 years ago

I'll try and answer your good questions about Prot not being from K-PAX, from the point of view that he actually was an alien:

1. I didn't personally notice him looking sad in that scene, he seemed to have the same expression as usual to me. Maybe he was starting to see that families are a good thing that K-PAXians are missing out on though.

He laters tells Mark at the end to contact his son, which shows he does know/learn the importance of family, at least to humans.

2. This could just be coincidental.

3. Maybe Robert Porter temporarily took back over (figuratively and literally). Like K-PAX takes over Porter's body and mind, but deep within the subconcious of the brain, Porter (his conciousness) must still there. So the sprinkler being such an emotional cue for Porter, sought of overrided K-PAX's control and Porter came back.

This explanation works if K-PAX is just a split personality as well, so it applies to both theories of what Prot is.

4. Maybe K-PAXians are like Vulcan's; they're very un-emotional, but they can experience emotion, it's just that they supress it, but it can be brought out in them. So it that were the case, it would appear that psychosis can have that effect on K-PAXians.

5. The thing is, Prot pretty much said that the idea of law and punishment, and eye for an eye, are wrong, or primitive. Which would imply that Prot thinks what Porter did was wrong.

Otherwise, Prot would have said something like "on K-PAX, we don't need law or police, we take care of problems ourselves", something like that, and that would be more congruent with the events that happened to Porter.

What K-PAX was getting at was that criminals don't really deservce to be punished. And when he mentions Buddah and Jesus, their teachings were about karma and turning the other cheek.

7. Could just be a coincidence.