K-PAX - A Sci-Fi Classic With No Special Effects!

(Kevin Spacey in K-PAX)
(2001) ★★★★★

Prot (Kevin Spacey) says he’s from K-PAX, a planet 1000 light years away from Earth. You know what that means? Light travels 300000 km/s. A light year means the distance you travel at the speed of light for a year. So it’d take you 1000 years to get here from K-PAX even if you travel at the speed of light. In order to reach Earth without becoming a 1000-year-old fossil, Prot must travel much, much faster than the speed of light, that is, according to Einstein, totally impossible, but you know he does. That sounds ridiculous to us chained by the Laws of Physics. Like Prot said, if he tells us how he’s able to do that, it’d simply blow our mind away.

Prot is picked up by the police at a train station. He says he’s not human. They think he’s crazy, so he’s introduced to psychiatrist Mark Powell (Jeff Bridges). Mark starts questioning him, but Prot intellectually questions his questions. He embarrasses Mark by showing off his exceptional intelligence from time to time. Yet Mark really doesn’t buy his story. He decides to dig up more about Prot by hypnotizing him. At least he thinks that’d help prevent Prot from doing something stupid to himself or others on the day he claims to be leaving Earth and going back to K-PAX. What happens in the end is, nevertheless, not quite what you expect anyways.

This is the most intriguing sci-fi flick I’ve ever seen in years. It excites me so with no special effects at all. The screenplay is remarkably ingenious. Kevin Spacey is so convincing at playing a K-Paxian, a bit like a lunatic and a high intelligent being at the same time. Nowadays, in a market flooded with visually amazing yet mindless 3D sci-fi blockbusters, a film like this really is of a rarity.

People may think ‘K-PAX’ is too educational, but we need to be educated at a time like this in particular, don’t we? You aware of how many miseries take place every day around the world due to the violence we use, our wrath, greed and delusion? I strongly believe that if we can see things the way Prot sees, we’ll discover a brand new world of peace and love around. ‘You humans, most of you, subscribe to this policy of an eye for an eye, a life for a life, which is known throughout the universe for its stupidity. Even your Buddha and your Christ had quite a different vision; but nobody's paid much attention to them, not even the Buddhists or the Christians.’ That’s how the K-Paxian perceive us. Sometimes, I do feel ashamed of myself as I know I don’t act like a Buddhist when I’m supposed to. I really do, but I know it’s after all a good start down on the road to full enlightenment. And everybody needs to realize that.

Prot also tells Mark something about the Universe, a big secret that we’ve been trying so hard to figure out; a possible truth that we’d better learn by heart; a faith that would guide us through the seemingly long but in fact very short history of human beings: ‘The universe will expand, and it will collapse back on itself, then will expand again. It will repeat this process forever. What you don't know is that when the universe expands again, everything will be as it is now. Whatever mistakes you make this time around, you will live through on your next pass. Every mistake you make, you will live through again, and again, forever. So my advice to you is to get it right this time around. Because this time is all you have.’