[This review spends extensive time discussing the thematic failures of The Terminal, things that will be more useful for people to have seen the movie already. For people who have yet to see the movie, there is ample discussion of performance and technical details, but you may have to skim a little. My apologies.]
A vaguely funny joke I heard multiple times as I backpacked through Europe in 1998: What do you call a person who speaks three languages? Trilingual. What do you call a person who speaks two languages? Bilingual. What do you call a person who speaks one language? American.
Hilarious, eh? It's one of the messages that I chose to get out of Steven Spielberg's new jumble of a movie, The Terminal, in which an entire plot could have been prevented by the appearance of a single skilled translator. But apparently Steven Spielberg doesn't live in a universe where a major New York international airport would have dozens of translators either on the premises or on call.
In general, in fact, Steven Spielberg doesn't live in the same universe as the rest of us. His fairy tale galaxy includes 9/11, but ignores any changes in American immigration or security policy since that tragedy. It would be easy to forgive the logical gaffs in The Terminal if there weren't so darned many of them. Spielberg is so bound at determined to transform the provocative ideas underlying The Terminal into a Spielbergian fairy tale, that he abandons any sense of the real world, any sense of storytelling and any sense of theme. Even as there are moments within The Terminal that work magically, it's a botch of a movie for Spielberg, a brilliant director falling victim to a half-baked script that he never should have been involved with in the first place. This is Spielberg's worst movie since Amistad and it's his most misguided effort since Hook. It's almost sad to see the normally assured helmer floundering around, searching for tone and momentum in a script that lacks both. Spielberg pushes and pushes and pushes, but ultimately to little avail.
The Terminal is the story of Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks), a resident of the geographically nonspecific Republic of Krakozhia. While he was en route to New York, there was a coup in his country. Suddenly, Viktor's passport is void. He can't enter America. He can't return to Krakozhia. And, apparently, nobody thinks to bring in an immigration attorney to sort out the mess and get him asylum of some sort, even temporary. Oops. Bad Dan. No place for logic. Certainly the logic isn't going to come from Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci), the airport's leading immigration official. Dixon is the kind of prissy bureaucrat who does everything by the book and yet thinks nothing of explaining a complicated immigration matter to a man who doesn't speak a word of English and requests a translator, but never follows up on that request. Ever. He does everything by the book and yet ultimately thinks nothing of allowing a foreign national without a passport have free reign over the International Terminal of an urban airport without doing a background check of any kind. Geez. There I go again.
Anyway, Viktor is plunked in the middle of the International Terminal and the only thing he's told is that he's not allowed to step out the doors into US soil. In the epic terminal set designed by Alex McDowell, the shops and gates of the International Terminal connect directly with the outside world and a taxi stand, without a set of sliding doors between them. Excellent! Oops. There I go again. This isn't the real world. Even though every once in a while people mention things that suggest that it's a post-9/11 universe, this airport has no connection whatsoever with the place you have to arrive at two hours early if you want to fly to see grandma.
Set loose amidst a sea of mid-scale shopping chains and fast food restaurants, Viktor is forced to fend for himself. He's given a handful of airport vouchers at the beginning, but from there, he's on his own. He's allowed to just take up residence in an unused portion of the terminal and otherwise he walks free, meeting endearing people along the way.
Not only is Viktor a jack of all trades, but he appears to be a master of all trades. He knows carpentry and masonry and plumbing and romance and he's a remarkably quick language study. Not only that, but he plays a mean game of poker and manages to become an expert on American immigration policy within weeks. Given that Hanks often plays the character like a Gumpian boob, it's difficult to entirely justify the conflicts within the character. Then again, considering just how little we know about Viktor from the beginning of the movie to the end, I guess it's just another thing we're supposed to accept. As hard as Spielberg seems to be trying to make this whole mess work, Hanks seems to be trying even harder. He does pratfalls. He cries. He shows a total absence of professional ego. He can't do anything with the inconsistencies of the character, but everything he can do to make you fall in love with Viktor, he does.
Over the course of nine months (perhaps the gestation period for his character?), Viktor roams. With virtually no narrative progression, he makes friends and falls in love. His friends are a motley collection of airport employees. He helps one minimum wage worker (Diego Luna) find love with a beautiful customs officer (Zoe Saldana) and he has frequent conversations with Indian custodial worker Guptha (Kumar Pollana) and some guy played by Chi McBride is there as well. He also finds a strong infatuation with a lovely, but clumsy flight attendant (Catherine Zeta-Jones), who is having an affair with a married man and spends the entire movie providing random facts about Napoleon and reminding viewers that she has really bad taste in men.
Why, you might ask, is Viktor in New York? What, you might wonder, is the Planters peanut tin he carries around? What storytelling purpose, you might ponder, does Viktor have in the terminal at all? And why, I'm inclined to scratch my head, did Spielberg want to make this movie at all?
I've seen a number of critics complain that The Terminal would have been a better movie if it knew what it wanted to be about. That is what I'm inclined to carp on as well.
The film's original script was written by Andrew Niccol (The Truman Show) and Sacha Gervasi and there are hints of that script littered in the film like confetti. Knowing Niccol's recurring themes from films like Gattacca and Simone, it's possible to know the movie that he wanted to make. An airport terminal is the perfect location to explore Niccol's favorite concerns with the cold superficiality of modern society, as well as the inherent artificiality of borders in a melting pot world. Airports are hermetically sealed worlds in which isolated travelers are thrown together in places that are triumphs of design and urban planning, rather than culture. Throw in the fact that airports are systems of constant surveillance, in which your every move is monitored by an unseeing security presence and The Terminal would seem like a perfect vehicle for Niccol to do his thing. It's not a coincidence when Hank's Viktor seems an awful lot like Jim Carrey's Truman Burbank, nor is it chance when Tucci's Dixon periodically takes on some of the traits of Ed Harris's Christoff. Those Truman Show moments are just Niccol's script trying to break free.
However, when the film passed from Niccol's directing hands into Spielberg's, there obviously a complete rewrite from Jeff Nathanson. This is pure speculation, but I feel comfortable in assuming that Nathanson, who worked with Spielberg on Catch Me if You Can, was responsible for all of the sentimental and mawkish touches that the filmmaker requires.
Spielberg, for example, has no interest in examining the corporate culture of the International Terminal. Rather than viewing the Burger Kings and the Hugo Bosses and the Discovery Stores with a sense of distrust, he just accepts them and revels in the sea of corporate logos. Somewhere, I can imagine a version of The Terminal that understands the irony in Viktor being prevented from entering America, but being trapped in this land of American commodification. Viktor is in a corporate hell, but Spielberg sees only product placement. Why is it that Viktor carries a Planters peanut can? It could be a shoebox, but that wouldn't necessarily offer the chance for characters to keep saying "Planters" over and over. And why is it that, in an early scene, Viktor asks Dixon where he can get the Nike shoes? We later discover that his mission in the United States has nothing at all to do with purchasing shoes or any other American product. As written by Nathanson, Viktor provides more random product plugs than any cinematic character since Dustin Hoffman's Rainman.
So Spielberg plays the commerce for cheap laughs. He also plays the surveillance in the airport for cheap laughs. Yes, it's funny whenever Viktor sticks his face into an airport camera and annoys Dixon. I'd just like to raise the more provocative possibility that as a citizen of an Eastern European country, Viktor might have a more antagonist relationship with the Big Brother aspects of the airport. I'd be much more interested in the character if Dixon's totalitarianism reminded Viktor of conflicted feelings towards his homeland. He comes to America expecting a certain sense of freedom and discovers that he's constantly watched and perpetually repressed by the government. But that's not how it goes.
Actually, it isn't the government repressing Viktor at all. Nope. Spielberg isn't interested in getting into the issues raised by the Department of Homeland Security and the restrictions put on foreigners since September 11, 2001. It isn't the United States trying to hold Viktor down. It's just Dixon. He's exactly the kind of symbolic paper villain that Spielberg loves substituting for a discussion of real problems. The only thing keeping Viktor in the terminal is Dixon, which is just too convenient for words. Why suggest that Viktor is the victim of a society that suddenly wants to shut its borders to outsiders? That would be complicated and would cause arch populist Spielberg to take a stand against a contemporary political injustice. Spielberg is always happy to criticize injustices in the past and injustices in the future and injustices in foreign countries, but I'm at a loss to think of the last time he was willing to actually make a movie that addresses things going on in the present.
Here's the thing: Spielberg once produced a fantastic animated movie called An American Tail, which was about the immigration experience of a young mouse named Fievel. Now Viktor Navorski is like a live action Fievel, only he isn't given the chance to find his opportunity and dreams in America. He's forced to assimilate himself into the false America of the terminal. Today, Fievel wouldn't be granted entry to the United States. Perhaps in 30 years, Spielberg will be able to make an animated movie about why conservatives decided to try to kick foreigners out of the country in the early 21st Century, but for now, he'd rather just make Dixon a paper tiger, the cause of every New World problem.
Spielberg also teases viewers with hints that the terminal is supposed to be viewed as a microcosm of America, a melting pot in itself. Viktor's friends are an Indian, an African-American and whatever it is that Diego Luna is playing, but that can't work because Nathanson doesn't bother to explain what any of supporting characters besides Guptha are doing there.
Instead of building the film around a unified theme, what unfolds is just a series of incidents. While the movie takes place over 9 months, the scenes float nebulously through time. Only Viktor's semi-relationship with the flight attendant appears to have a linear progression. Otherwise, editor Michael Kahn could have tossed the other scenes in a blender and plunked them down wherever. It hardly matters what empty conversation or interaction follows another. Certain moments -- Dixon enlisting Viktor's help with a crazed Russian or a poker game with the supporting characters -- probably could have been inserted any number of different places.
Other plot lines just never fully develop at all. If the flight attendant weren't played by the luminous Catherine Zeta-Jones, she would be one of the most annoying cinematic characters I can remember. Her dialogue consists only of apologies and inane bits of trivia. As written, she isn't funny, intelligent or kind, much less particularly believable as a romantic foil for anybody. I also didn't understand why Zeta-Jones was doing the part as an American. The character is much more interesting if she's also a foreigner in a different kind of limbo, using New York as a hub even though it isn't her home. If she and Viktor were both aliens using the terminal as their false America, that might have been a point of romantic bonding. Insteand, this was one of the few examples I can think of where I was hoping that the two main characters didn't get together.
Since the romance is a dud, the movie builds steadily to absolutely nothing. Finally, three quarters of the way through, Viktor explains his mission in New York. His goal only provides a way for the movie to end and it doesn't relate to anything in the movie that has come before. The ending just imposes a Spielberg-style spin on the movie, without providing a satisfying resolution to anything else.
Oh well.
Technically speaking, The Terminal is often quite marvelous. Even if McDowell's set seems over-reliant on product plugs for its structure, it's an amazing feat. Although the terminal doesn't exist in the real world, its scope is entirely realistic, as are its details.
Janusz Kaminski's cinematography is just lovely. Kaminski approaches the outside world as both luminous and alien, making dramatic contrasts between the artificial lights of the terminal and the pure glow flooding in from every window and door. The way that Kaminski shoots Catherine Zeta-Jones is marvelous as well. She always seems to have her own light source and shading to produce an Old Hollywood glamour, even when it has no relationship to any of the light sources in the scene with her. She's other-worldly.
Spielberg's direction falters because he can't find a tonal comfort zone. He mixes arbitrary bits of slapstick with swelling bouts of romanticism, but neither extreme seems fitting. John Williams' score, channeling Fiddler on the Roof either adds to the confusion or is similarly confused. Additionally Spielberg has directed most of his actors to go over-the-top in disparate ways.
Despite the fact that he's basically playing Zorba the Armenian, Hanks is as good as he could possibly be. He's funny and he's relatively consistent with his muddle of an accent. I don't know why he's playing the part as somewhat mentally disabled, but I guess that's what he wanted to do.
Tucci starts off as a comic foil, but in the end, he and Viktor don't have a playful relationship. This isn't a battle of wits because Dixon is a better dictator. I wish that there had been more back-and-forth and less of Dixon threatening Viktor for a variety of reasons. If Dixon really wanted Viktor out of the airport, he could have just brought in a translator or an immigration attorney. It was simple. Instead, his motivations are boring and muddled.
Zeta-Jones blinks a lot. Or she bats her eye-lashes. I dunno. She's wasted, though. Her dialogue about Napoleon and about croissants is just horribly written, but she has to play it to the hilt.
Luna and McBride are fine, though it isn't really clear what either character does in the airport and why they also seem to live there. Pallana, the veteran of several Wes Anderson movies, is best when he doesn't talk, because his character's story isn't really all that interesting. He does, however, have the expressive face of a stand-up comic and I particularly enjoyed his pleasure at watching pedestrians slip on his freshly mopped floors.
To Spielberg's credit, the cast is fairly diverse. I've insulted him in the past for whitewashing the future (in Minority Report, most recently) and the past (in Catch Me If You Can most recently), but he makes the effort here. Go him.
In isolated moments, I liked The Terminal very much, but I didnŐt like the movie. Spielberg is a director who puts a strong authorial stamp on each of his movies, but with this one, his stamp came at the cost of everything that should have been provocative or intelligent. This is a 2.5 star out of 5 movie that tries hard to be a lot of things, but ends up being nothing.
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