Other mistake: When Prot visits the doctor's house, he thanks the wife and the camera is zoomed into his sunglasses. The reflection of his glasses shows the doctor looking at him, but the doctor is standing behind him. (00:53:40)
K-Pax (2001)
Plot summary
Directed by: Iain Softley
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey, Alfre Woodard, Mary McCormack
The movie tells the story of a mysterious patient called Prot (Spacey) at a mental hospital who claims to be from a distant planet called K-PAX. As his psychiatrist Dr. Powell (Bridges) tries to figure out exactly how to help the patient, he gradually begins to realize that this so-called alien is having a remarkable effect on the mental health of the hospital's other patients.
More mistakes in K-Pax
Prot: You know what I've learned about your planet? There's enough life on Earth to fill 50 planets. Plants, animals, people, fungi, viruses, all jostling to find their place, bouncing off each other, feeding off each other. Connected.
Dr. Mark Powell: You don't have that kind of connection on K-PAX?
Prot: Nobody wants, nobody needs. On K-PAX, when I'm gone, nobody misses me. There would be no reason to. And yet I sense that when I leave here... I will be missed. Yes. Strange feeling.
Trivia: Kevin Spacey had to record the scene where Prot eats a whole banana (skin and all) 27 times.
Question: Despite Dr. Mark Powell's certainty that "Prot" is a delusional man named Robert Porter who lost his mind and attempted suicide years earlier, no explanation is ever given for Prot's extraordinary resistance to powerful psychiatric drugs, his superhuman vision (into the Ultraviolet range), and his knowledge of deep-space astrophysics, which not only rivals but exceeds the knowledge of Earthly astrophysicists. Prot's enigmatic abilities are tested by experts, and the experts are left scratching their heads. The probability that Prot actually is an alien entity occupying a deeply-damaged and "discarded" human body seems confirmed on many levels, above and beyond the rantings of a mere mental patient. So, why does Dr. Powell consistently reject the hard evidence before his eyes?
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Answer: He rejects it for two main reasons. First, each of the items you mention have possible, even if unlikely, explanations. Some people have strange or no reaction to certain drugs (for example I have almost no response to any painkillers). People who have had their corneas replaced with artificial lens can see near ultraviolet (though nowhere near 300-400 angstroms). The sheriff described Porter as being very bright, and he was in to astronomy, so while a great stretch, not impossible he somehow formulated the information he presented. The second reason, building upon these, is Occam's razor. As a person in the sciences, Dr. Powell is driven to believe things have a reasonable explanation, even if we don't currently know what it is, and thinking Prot is just a bright and unusual human is a more reasonable belief to him than believing Prot is an alien possessing a human's body.
jimba
Just remarking, there's no comparison of painkillers and psychiatric drugs. Thorazine and Haloperidol (Haldol) are both powerful anti-psychotic drugs with numerous side effects. Prot is immune to Thorazine and Haloperidol (as well as alcohol), which is more than extraordinary, it's otherworldly.
Charles Austin Miller