Sarah Clementson- K-Pax- Post #5

The plotline in the film K-Pax, was one that kept me guessing. After all of the movies we had watched in the class, I was not sure if the film was going to lean towards actually stating that there was a planet named K-Pax. As it progressed and the character Prot was developed more fully through hypnosis, I began to sense that it was actually taking this and using it as a psychological film based on the Freudian idea of Repression. Prot’s wife and daughter had been killed and he in turn took their murder’s life. The repressive form of coping was implemented with taking on the identity of a man from a different planet named K-Pax.
The film could be analyzed under the shamanistic practices we used to discuss the process seen in The Jacket. The hypnosis that Dr. Mark Powell used to reach the recesses of Prot’s mind was able to discover the root problem in Prot’s life. Just as if it were a spiritual journey. It was also through this practice that Mark was able to see life from a different perspective. Prot stated that “every mistake you make will remake again and again so get it right the first time.” When he said this, I think it was a sacred moment for Mark because he began to see the error in his ways towards his son and he began to appreciate his family more. The hypnosis was a type of healing for Mark and not Prot. Prot ended up catatonic with Mark there to take care of him, but it was almost as though Prot had come into his life to give Mark healing even though he was the doctor and supposed to assist in the healing process for Prot.
The film made me wonder about the biological age that we live in now. Humans always want to fix something and make it better and stronger, and yet it was in Prot’s innocence that he was able to heal those around him. It was in simple moments that gave people meaning, such as the blue bird, or having tasks instead of living an aimless life in a psychiatric facility. We want to have meaning for our existence and yet we constantly mess it up by making things instead of understanding that there is already a Potter and we are the clay and he is the ultimate Healer.