K-PAX (2001)

A man in a psychiatric institute claims to be from a planet one thousand light years away, and a weary doctor spends two hours deciding whether to believe him. This is K-PAX, a 2001 studio product adapted from Gene Brewer's novel, and it arrives with the soft earnestness of a film convinced it is saying something profound about the human condition. It is not. It is a mystery that resolves by declining to resolve, and a drama that mistakes ambiguity for depth.

On the matter of social consciousness, the film is nearly barren. Alfre Woodard appears as a psychiatrist and Ajay Naidu and Tracy Vilar drift through supporting roles, all of them present without comment, which in 2001 was simply how a well-cast studio film looked. Mary McCormack and Woodard play capable professionals, yet the screenplay offers no gendered critique whatsoever. The ward's patients are treated with a certain dignity, and the film is gentler toward mental illness than its contemporaries, but it frames their conditions as trauma and delusion awaiting diagnosis and cure. There is no identity to celebrate here, only a puzzle to solve. Race, class, climate, and the body go entirely unmentioned. The film is too busy staring at the stars.

The closing voiceover, in which prot explains that the universe repeats itself and we should make this time count, is a soft homily, personal uplift dressed in cosmic robes. It preaches, but only about reconciliation with one's estranged son. The picture opened at number one and then sank, earning less than its budget, and a plagiarism suit from an Argentine director hung over it for years. What remains is a handsome, foggy exercise in pseudo-spiritual comfort, a film that generates light and very little heat.