Was he an alien or not?
anyone?
shareNo
shareYes.
Unless the patient who he said he would take to K-Pax just magically disappeared from a mental institution.
MovieChat Forums > K-PAX (2001) Discussion > Was he an alien or not?
Uhhh yes and no.
sharesimple (and for those that say it up for debate the guy dissapeared from the hospital for 3 days and miraculously turned up sitting in a tree)
robert portman had had a link with an alien entity during his lifetime, who seems to have possessed him completelyafter his attempted suicide (which may have left him catatonic after the ordeal)
the entity perhaps left with bess after it left portmans body, there's no speculation on this...there is absolutely an alien entity at play here and there was absolutely no way that portman (without possesion of the alien entity) couldve calculated the location of a binary star system.
Perhaps the memories were a shared memory system because of the link he had with the entity 'prot'
He was alien.
Too many proves during all the movie is seen.
Also if he Prot is not Alien (or is just a schizophrenic) , then how can
do strange things:
1. Know everything about the star system so perfectly.
2. Transport to different location without being caught. (note: escaping from mentally hospital is something that can't be be done easily without help)
3. Prot stares at the ALIEN balloon , when he was in a car or bus (I don't remember exactly)
4. Exact time of events: he can't just disappear with so much well calculated time if he was not mentally well (I want to tell you that I KNOW that autistic mentally people can do things with extremely perfect accuracy)
5. What was the last scenes with the white noise of all the cameras?
Because he leave the body of Portman and return to his world, this makes sec. cameras to be out of order.
Then Portman's mind was freed from Port's presence.
6. What happen to Bets (sorry this was the wrong name, I didn't watch the movie from two years now) she vanishes with Prot at the same time.
7. Look at the end of the credits , even the doctor (who was so sure that Prot is just a man with mental problems) was in doubt about his true id , he is seen to look from his telescope to the sky searching for K-Pax.
I didn't say this points are 100% sure that he is ALIEN. It's just my point of view, I just don't see how can be just mental sick person with so much constant mind and perfect clear thoughts. I Just don't get it.
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This movie could just go both ways.
-Either he was just well-educated and incredibly smart too (to calculate those physic systems), had a lot of imagination and blocked his memory by making a peaceful world in his mind. And he might have made Betty to imagine herself into K-Pax so she could change.
-Or he was an alien with otherworldly abilities to control space and time (like an extra-dimensional being). He might really made a visit to Earth and made foul of people (that's what I enjoyed about this movie). He might also feel he should help people so he could do some good aswell.
Although I just couldn't prove he was a man when he made the cameras blind, made Betty disappear like that and is able to see ultraviolat rays (as the doctor said).
I just like the idea that he was a being with God-like powers.
"But they knew they f**ed up." James Rolfe as AVGN
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I think Prot was in habiting Robert Porter ... helping him find some place he could be looked after. I don't think Prot was from K-Pax or that anything he said about his origins was true. He was so intellectually above everyone else and he genuinely felt for these people but I think his really story is something we can't even begin to understand and ... he was having a bit of fun too. Bess! He now would inhabit her and help her. The contest was not about who would go with him to K-Pax. It was about Prot and who he would help next. BUT ... there was a smile on Porter's face at the end (in the wheelchair with the Doc) which told me that Prot checks up on the Doc every once in awhile.
Also, Prot may not be the only one of his kind on this planet.
I kind of like the way it ended ... it kinda left it up to the viewer how it all works out. In the same way all the people in the mental hospital saw Prot differently.
Just my thoughts.
Max
The original intent of the book's author is for it to be a complete mystery, without enough strong evidence either way. I think the movie irresponsibly added a few things to tilt it in the direction of him being an alien, or at least sometimes 'possessed' by one.
To me, it's more interesting to see Prot as Robert Porter's refuge personality, which makes sense considering his childhood interest in astronomy and hard life at home. In the wake of his tragedy, Prot completely took over.
"Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?" -Carlin
Also, Prot's description of his society (painful reproduction process, no families, no murder) make it a good retreat for Robert Porter. Good evidence of crazy.
"Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?" -Carlin
Let me preface my comment by saying I have not seen this movie in ten years...
Outside this film, in the real world, there's no credible evidence to believe intelligent aliens have visited earth. I'm not going to get into a protracted argument on this point, just stating it as a background assumption because...
if we were presented with these exact circumstances in the real-world -- imagine K-Pax is a documentary -- people would be reluctant to conclude Spacey's character was an alien from a distant planet traveling on a beam of light. Yes, we would be presented with compelling evidence that seems difficult to explain, but we'd be reluctant to withhold judgment (unless you already believe aliens have visited earth, hang out, probe the odd Farmer, etc).
Difference is when watch it as a fictional film, it's rather easy to conclude "he's an alien!" because in the cinema multi-verse aliens are rather common, as well as elaborate government conspiracies, memory loss, dragons, and so on. The "reality" of the film is a confounding variable because it's so easy to say, "creatures literally not from this world did it!"
The opposite is if I showed you a magic trick. You may have no idea how it's done, but you'd still be near-certain that I did not violate the laws of physics because "there's no such thing as magic." Some people believe entertainers like David Blaine and Criss Angel are capable of violating the laws of this universe, and those people are mistaken.