Ambiguity and Faith in K-PAX

In the film K-PAX, it is unclear if Kevin Spacey is playing the alien Prot from the planet K-PAX or if he is the traumatized Robert Porter, a man who tried to kill himself after his wife and daughter were murdered by a drifter. Prot has many unearthly attributes such as his ability to see UV light, seemingly disappear for three days, and has an intimate knowledge of space that only the best trained astrophysicists are beginning to understand. During hypnotherapy, Prot displays an intimate knowledge of Robert Porter's tragic life and looks exactly like him.

The film keeps the audience guessing Prot's identity even after the film is over. The film has the perfect balance of explainable and unexplainable phenomena that leaves Prot's identity frustratingly ambiguous. Robert could have snapped out of his fantasy persona on the five year anniversary of his family's murder and been left in a catatonic state from the breakdown of his brain. He also could have attempted to commit suicide but it failed, leaving him catatonic under the bed. On the other hand, maybe Prot had taken the form of Robert on Earth and left his body behind when he traveled back to K-PAX. The one thing that keeps me from definitively believing the mental illness-related ideas is the disappearance of the patient Bess, who Prot chose earlier in the film to take back with him to K-PAX. It's implied that she left the planet with Prot, but going off of how Prot left, wouldn't Bess' body be left behind as well? Or since she is human her body would have gone with her?

This ambiguity makes K-PAX a very thrilling movie to watch. I can relate it to my own Christian beliefs by seeing how the members of the mental hospital so deeply believe in Prot and the guidance he gives them in helping them heal from their own ailments. When they wheel Prot/Robert's body out of the room, no one recognizes the body, which is another hint that Prot is gone. Prot acted as a kind of savior and teacher for these "lost" people, and seeing the genuine love and belief these people felt for him was a very interesting thing to see. The fact that some proofs of Prot's existence can be explained and some can't is a very familiar situation to me: In some ways I can easily explain the existence of God and in other ways I simply state that I need to have faith that it is true. Similar to Prot: Some things can be explained to circumstance, others need to be understood through faith that Prot is who he says he is.