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The Terminal -- screenplay by Sacha Gervasi ***
I suppose the big question about this movie is, was Spielberg trying to make a deep movie, one with many layers of meaning, or simply a comedy? But then I've always told creative writing students that what they intended is irrelevant -- it's what the reader/viewer takes away from the final product that matters. So. The final product.This is a polished, well acted, quite funny movie about an absurd situation: a man called Viktor Navorski arrives at JFK from a fictitious eastern block country. While he was in the air, a revolution broke out at home, leaving him stateless and without a valid passport, and thus, he's told by Frank Dixon, the really unlikeable head of immigration (Stanley Tucci seems to be making a career out of playing unlikeable men), that he's stuck in the terminal until the governments work things out and he can be issued a new visa. Product placement was no big challenge in this movie. Victor asks the head of security 'what do I do now?" and gets the answer: "there's only one thing to do here -- shop".
This is, of course, great material for comedy. You've got a man who barely speaks English, who has no money, but who is personable and resourceful, and he's got to survive on crackers and ketchup in the middle of the consumer excess of the international terminal. While Victor is finding ways to feed himself and get along with the employees (food service workers, maintenance people, security guards) he's also fending off Frank Dixon's increasingly frantic moves to get him out of the terminal and onto somebody else's turf -- which would involve detention someplace a lot less pleasant than Gate 63.
Allegory? Sure. The terminal is the idealized US -- glitzy, clean, prettily packaged, all about buying stuff and going places. Outside the terminal is the real world, but Victor's got many obstacles to overcome before he gets there. Victor (who is on a quest) has to cross the bridge into the real world, but Dixon the technocrat/ troll under the bridge is there to stop him. Dixon throws riddles and challenges Victor's way, all of which Victor handles with a native wit and easy adaptability. It's at this point that the allegory gets the best of Spielberg, whose instincts always fail him, it seems to me, in the last part of any movie he makes. In this case, Victor is charming enough to carry most of the load.
PS: Biggest mistake? Sticking in a half-baked, poorly resolved romance. Really, really didn't need Catherine Zeta Jones.
July 5, 2004 10:37 PM
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