K-PAX

K-PAX (2001) is about a man brought into a psychiatric hospital in New York. Prot says he comes from a planet called K-PAX. His doctor sets out to treat him, but everything he says holds together, and his knowledge of astronomy leaves specialists baffled. What the film does is withhold the answer. Prot is either genuinely an alien or a person carrying severe trauma, and both readings stay open until the end, and even the closing scene does not quite decide. The source is Gene Brewer's novel. Iain Softley directed. Kevin Spacey plays Prot and Jeff Bridges the doctor. The best known argument around it is one of resemblance. The similarity in subject and structure to the 1986 Argentine film Man Facing Southeast, in which a man arrives at a psychiatric hospital saying he is from another planet, has been discussed for years. The makers of K-PAX denied any connection. It runs 120 minutes. Good for: stories deliberately left ambiguous, psychiatric hospitals, and two actors playing off each other. Less good for: the other patients are written as colourful figures to be cured, and that view has dated. The clues become too clear in the last act and weaken the claim to ambiguity.