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The Terminal (2004)
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Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Tom Hanks, Stanley Tucci, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Chi McBride, Diego Luna, Kumar Pallana, Zoe Saldana
Rated PG-13
Grade: A-"You are, at this time, simply unacceptable."
Steven Spielberg is a combination of a great filmmaker and a great spin doctor. Or maybe those are one and the same anyway. He can get away with so much because he knows precisely how to play it, how to tell his story -- no matter how schmaltzy, improbable or even lame -- with a sensibility that is both artful and unabashedly populist. This remains the case when he's being grim, introspective, upbeat, playful, or any other adjective that can describe films in his tremendously diverse oeuvre. He can do anything, and he can usually do it better than almost anyone else.
The Terminal is a testament to his incredible talent. Its conceit seemed to me fundamentally uninteresting -- a customs technicality forces a man to live in an airport terminal, ho ho ho -- and not even Spielberg's name could get me excited to see the movie. I should have known better. Within ten minutes, I was hooked; within thirty, I was rapt; by the last act, I knew that the hands of a master had played me -- and most everyone else -- like a piano. It's beautiful.
Part of making a good movie is hiring the right people, of course, and Spielberg has the clout and the eye to get the best. Production designer Alex McDowell, in particular, should get a hell of a Christmas fruit basket from the director this year. His primary "international terminal" set is a marvel -- gleaming and expansive, it replicates the tidy mini-mall feel of today's airports while incorporating subtle elements of the fantastic: it's a little too clean, isn't it, a little too much like one of those theoretical CGI blueprints used to promote an expansion or a renovation. The space is both strikingly real and a little otherworldly, a slight but noticeable tweak of reality that puts us in a different but nearby universe.
Much of the same can be said about Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks), the traveler from the fictional country of Krakozhia who becomes stranded in John F. Kennedy International Airport when a military coup in his homeland makes it a political non-entity, invalidating his passport. In many ways, he resembles someone you might actually run into at an airport: confused but self-assured, obedient of authority, at first unable to speak English. Later, as he somehow gets a construction job, develops a command of the language (his mother tongue, for some reason, seems to be Russian) and unwittingly woos a beautiful flight attendant (Catherine Zeta-Jones), we realize that no, this probably isn't your run-of-the-mill emigrant.
One of Spielberg's gifts is letting all of this develop naturally, keeping one foot in reality and one foot in a fairy tale without making the characters puppets of a labored plot. The man is a manipulator, for sure, but the emotions he so skillfully evokes are real, not the results of manufactured sentimentality or cynical story contrivance. The last act is the most blatant act of tearjerkery that Spielberg has committed since E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, and I am fully convinced that no other filmmaker on earth could have pulled it off. I imagine that reading the last pages of Jeff Nathanson's screenplay would have given one the impression of a climax and ending that is treacly and sickeningly upbeat, the typical Hollywood conception of what is "touching." How the director turned it into a genuinely moving paean to friendship, loyalty and humanity, I can't really tell you, though my guess is that the masterful and effortless character set-up that he engaged in over the preceding two hours had a lot to do with it. In any case, that's precisely what he did. It's quintessential Spielberg -- again, not quite real, not quite false -- and it works.
Hanks gives a tremendous comic performance -- a bit affected at times, but that's what the performance called for, in a way. I loved the way he turned Navorski into someone who is lovable, but not a pity-magnet. Even when he is reduced to eating saltine crackers with mustard and ketchup as his meal, it plays like resourcefulness more than anything else. Hanks is joined by a terrific supporting cast, including Stanley Tucci in a deceptively elaborate performance as the villainous, conceited head customs official, and the three-pronged attack of Chi McBride, Diego Luna and Kumar Pallana as three airport employees who befriend Viktor. The latter, in particular -- an unknown elderly Indian actor -- might find himself a celebrity after his turn here.
John Williams contributes one of the best musical scores of his career, a minimalist, mostly non-orchestral set of compositions that's simultaneously playful and stirring. It's just another element in Spielberg's brand of big-budget art.