Subject: Review: K-Pax (2001)

From: Karina Montgomery <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 19:19:51 -0000

K-Pax

Matinee Price

This film is just like reading a nice poem - pretty, thoughtful;, with
gentle surprises tucked in, an encouragement to form one's own impressions,
and then a smiling slide into forgettability.  Also like a poem, the
central image is what holds it together, rather than a compelling narrative
structure.  Kevin Spacey is that key element, the locus that makes the
unfortunately titled tale work.  Former Starman Jeff Bridges is an
obsessive dismissive foil to Spacey's gentle Prot (rhymes with goat).  Is
he or isn't he?  It doesn't even matter - the pleasure is in listening to
the verses by Charles Leavitt, who has sunchased the novel of Gene
Brewer's.  Either he's human, which works, or he's not, which works too.
Spacey's performance generously allows you to make your own decision.

A user on the IMDB likened it to 12 Monkeys meets Cocoon, which is both
short-sighted and completely misleading - 12 Monkeys is tense, surreal,
funny, and circuitous, and Cocoon is elderly, feel-good, and a little
pap-like.  Just a little.  Yes, the inmates of the asylum - I'm sorry,
patients in the psychiatric hospital - are charming and eccentric and
manageably cuddly. Yes, the looming identity question of whether or not
Prot is actually from space is a wee bit like Bruce Willis' internal
conflict for one reel of 12 Monkeys. However, this movie feels more like
A.I. in its sweet contemplative passages, or The Green Mile in the
wonderful reactions to the miracle of Coffey.

The cinematographer John Mathieson (Gladiator) caresses light of all forms
with his camera for most of the shots, sliding along a dust-limned beam
like a finger along the back of an antique chair.  The result is the
delicate magical feel as City of Angels, tasting light, feeling the air
around us.  Nearly every shot is littered with delicate chromatic
aberrations, thrown casually by prisms or drinking glasses or what have
you, snippets of the visual poem of bent light.  The little fragments of
rainbow serve as a moderately obvious reminder that there is more than just
what our locked-in senses, our logic, can perceive.  It's what makes this
film worth watching.  That, and Kevin Spacey.  Prot manages to spout the
not-unusual but certainly timely late-model Star Trek messages of the
inherent savagery and short-sightedness of humans these days, without
sounding condescending or condemning.  Prot, whether in his mind or back on
K-Pax, is a scientist as well; and watching him and Bridges tasting each
other's minds is the dynamic that makes this a watchable film.

Bridges is similar in carriage to his president character in The Contender
- very intelligent but also very stubborn, and definitely not willing to
expand his concept of what's possible beyond what he knows for certain
himself.  Perhaps it's psychologist training that makes people that way,
maybe it's a zodiac sign; either way, Bridges brings more of it across than
would simply be implied by the scripted dialogue.  They both did a great
job, and there are little vignettes that allow the audience, if they are
willing to not be scientific, to doubt, and to wonder.  A film that does
that will get my blessing every time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
These reviews (c) 2001 Karina Montgomery.  Please feel free to forward
but just credit the reviewer in the text.  Thanks.
[email-masked]
Check out previous reviews at:
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http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com - the Online Film Critics Society
http://www.hsbr.net/reviews/karina/ - Hollywood Stock Exchange Brokerage
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