Rebekah Cook - Religion in K-Pax

K-Pax is the last film we watched in the class and probably my favorite.  It’s about a man named Prot who claims he is an alien from another planet called K-Pax that is more advanced than Earth.  He attempts to prove that he is from that planet by showing his unearthly abilities, and because of this he is placed in a mental institution.  During his sessions with the psychologist he reveals that he is here to help a man named Robert Porter who has experienced an extremely tragic event.  The film keeps the audience guessing whether the character is Prot from K-Pax or Robert Porter who has been missing for about 5 years since this tragic event in his life.

I believe that Prot and Robert Porter are two separate identities.  Two particular scenes in the film suggest that Prot serves as a guardian angel for Robert Porter.  The first being this quote that Prot says to the psychologist after a session of hypnotherapy, “Now that you’ve found Robert, please take good care of him.”  In this session Prot revealed the emotional state that Robert was actually in due to that tragic event.  The second scene shows the time when Prot claimed he was to return to K-Pax via a beam of light.  As this beam of light shines into his room, the character completely changes personality.  He turns into a mute, very troubled man who is lying unconscious under his bed.  I think these two scenes show that Prot had come to Earth to help Robert get to a place where he needed to be, and once Prot’s time was up and Robert was in the right place, Prot left.  Prot helped Robert find the right help and this to me is what classifies Prot as Robert’s “guardian angel.”