| Product: |
K-Pax (DVD) |
| Date: |
08/01/02 (70 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: see review
Disadvantages: see review
Thank God this screenplay was kept out of the hands of someone like Stephen Spielberg and away from an actor like Robin Williams was a thought which ran fleetingly through my head halfway through watching K-Pax. It has all the hallmarks of the kind of movie those two would leap at and then drown in sickening sentimentality, pious messages and unnecessarily flashy special effects...it has all the hallmarks of the kind of movie the American public seem to lap up and which has the rest of the world reaching for the sick bags. Thankfully however, they didn’t get a sniff at it but instead it fell into the far more capable hands of director Iain Softley and the superb acting talents of Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges. Looking at the movie on paper I would never have touched it, but with the inclusion of these two in the lead roles I knew it must at least have something going for it...and boy was I right!
The story is nothing new, in fact if you have seen the likes of Starman which interestingly also starred Jeff Bridges then you will see that this movie covers a lot of old ground. It is however the sheer style in which it does so and the strength of the performances which carries it through to such good effect. The whole premise revolves around the relationship between Kevin Spacey and his psychologist Jeff Bridges. Spacey says he is from outer space, having travelled to the Earth on a beam of light from the planet K-Pax. He says he is holidaying, having wanted to see what a class BA planet looks like, collect some notes and then travel back home to K-Pax when he is finished. By making such claims of course he is considered to be mentally ill and locked up inside a secure institution where he is assigned to psychologist Jeff Bridges who becomes more than a little interested in his case. Is Spacey a lunatic, or is he indeed from a distant planet which is far more advanced than our own? That is the question which begins to puzzle the at first hugely sceptical B
ridges who can’t quite make up his mind whether Spacey is for real or has suffered from a highly traumatic experience which has caused his mind to close in upon itself and create this new personality. He investigates, but none of his scepticism is helped by some rather puzzling traits exhibited by Spacey such as being able to see ultra-violet light, draw perfect space diagrams of places only recently discovered in space and so on...
K-Pax is a delightful movie which could have been a truly awful one were it handled by a different director and had it starred some lesser names than the superb character actor of Kevin Spacey in the lead role of the K-Paxian/mental patient Prot or the ever reliable Jeff Bridges as his psychiatrist. It manages to sidestep the kind of cloying sentimentality which I had feared it would exhibit and instead just seeks to weave a tale which both intrigues and delights in equal measures. Its the kind of thing which is made for Kevin Spacey who is always at his best in this kind of role and his character and personality carries the entire movie...not for the first time. Prot is played with a calm, confident persona, in fact far from being alien and bizarre he does in fact come across as the sanest individual in the whole institution. Aside from the way he eats a banana you would never see anything strange about him...oh other than that he claims to be from another world, to surf on beams of light and such like, but at least he promises not to comes bursting out of our chests at any stage! Its another masterful display of character acting from Spacey who just keeps highlighting just how good he is with each subsequent movie. Prot moves among his fellow patients, not offering flashy displays of extra-terrestrialism but offering gentle persuasion and hope, ‘curing’ their ills not with a shot of thorazine in the butt, but by reaching out to them and giving them what they need. The parallels with Jesus here are blatantly o
bvious, as is a later sequence which is reminiscent of Jesus instructing the wise men in the temple but its all handled without feeling ‘preachy’ so it works, all of which aided by the clam, confident, decidedly matter-of-fact attitude of his character.
There is none of the sense of wonderment here in Prot which Hollywood tends to imbue in its alien characters. As. Spacey’s character engages in conversations with Bridges in their ‘sessions’ it is Prot who is doing the teaching here rather than questioning about Bridges' own planet. It is indeed like Prot knows more about this planet and where it is going than its own residents and he has a message to imbue upon us, without of course, saying too much because we need to learn from our own mistakes - or perish trying because we were either meant to be or not. In some segments which feel almost sermon-like Prot highlights how workaholic Bridges need find out more about his own planet than his, suggesting the workaholic doctor spend more time with his family rather than with his work and his patients. These are the few occasions like this when you feel that K-Pax is getting a little over-bearing but fortunately they are fleeting. K-Pax is a movie designed to make you think and it does just that. It raises a number of questions about life on this planet, where our society is going and emphasises the importance of family and how much we should appreciate it. Prot claims to not have a family back on K-Pax, in fact families do not even exist and yet even he feels the strength in family and comes to see its worth highlighting how important we should see them as and yet how much we take them for granted. Its the kind of thing which ought to give you pause for thought to look t your own life and check that you’re not taking such things for granted yourself...and yes, that all sounds rather preachy but trust me, the strength of performance carries it over those moments.
K
-Pax is at its best during those sessions between Bridges and his patient, or during the time spent with the other patients, who are all the usual mental patient charicatures but it is forgivable. The time when K-Pax begins to slide is when Bridges starts playing amateur sleuth because it all seems rather hurried and less than convincing - if detective work were this easy then I would switch careers straight away. You have to argue about some of the medical ethics on display as well here. hypnosis is used as a crowbar to pry into the mind of a patient, forcing open the doors and sending them way over the acceptable limits without anyone actually batting an eyelid. At the same time the mental health service is portrayed as not trying to help but rather to shove people in a hospital and should they cause any kind of problem to throw them up to the violent wing and pump them full of thorazine for the rest of their lives in a one strike and your out ruling. Some of this seems at best under-researched shall we say.
Still, I don’t suppose you can expect too much in the way of accuracy from a Hollywood production and at least this time they are not rewriting history for once or otherwise treating the viewer like too much of an idiot. K-Pax is a story you can watch and want to believe in. Its asks a lot of questions and asks you to make up your owns conclusions without being one of those movies which simply leaves you with questions and no chance of a satisfactory answer. Is Prot an alien or a patient who had a severe emotional trauma? Nah, I’m not going to tell you but suffice to say that finding out is a totally engrossing way to spend two hours of your time.
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