Spielberg again

Rating: 8/10 (28 June 2004)

Spielberg Again
Though Spielberg is trying to break free, The Terminal continues the unchanged style he developed decades ago. A biography on Spielberg stressed how he wishes to gain acceptance from the majority through his films. The struggle of being an individual is usually handled by artists by declaring their differences, like Scorsese. This struggle of being different usually leads to personal cinema that reflects the artist, Scorsese's Mean Streets, James Joyce's A Portrait of an Artist, Picasso's many self portraits. THe artist declares how he and he alone sees the world. This is not the case with Spielberg who stresses the opposite. Instead of placing the focus on what's different the emphasis is placed on what is the same.
Even though Hanks portrays an individual from an unfamiliar, unrelatable, unamerican country, he behaves in a fashion that gathers empathy and understanding from an American audience. This sentimentality is not what Spielberg believes but desires. His strength as a filmmaker does not lie in his appeal to the intellect, like Coppola, but to the heart. An appeal to a universal heart by displaying (whether he knows it or not) archetypes that strike an emotional universal cord with his audience. Atonement with the Father, Women as Temptress, Refusal to the call and many others.
Spielberg turns an Indian janitor into a very familiar friend, and Hanks into all of us who have ever felt lost. This struggle for acceptance is not new to Hollywood, Chaplin did it in every movie. Beginning as the wimp who works up the courage to be the hero.
The Terminal falls between Catch Me If You Can's airports and Always' characters and sentimentality. Its a good movie but not a great one.
and though I'd prefer Spielberg to continue in the direction of Empire of the Sun and Schindler's List The Terminal does develop very nicely. The movie is a very interesting look at how an man survives in a new land. I wouldn't say it's allegorical but it does allude to many different ideas.
Spielberg depicts everything from learning the language to building a bed out of chairs. Hanks is stripped of all of Maslow?s Hierarchy of Needs. He is forced to survive much like he did in Cast Away. Without food he begins to work by gathering carts for quarters. These quarters buy him food. This job is closer to slave labor than anything else and is replaced by another willing to do the job for less. By working with his hands he becomes a construction worker and moves up in status. After saving a man's father's life he gathers the support of what could be a rebellion who wave a copy of Hank's hand like a flag. Hank's rebellion allows him to enter America, or the place where his dreams will come true.
What is maybe more interesting his Hank's decision to go back home. He journeys to the land to make his dreams come true and comes back down. But many filmmakers would argue that it's not what you show it's how you show it. Spielberg resorts to his classic "ongoing lines" such as "do you have an appointment", or "one girl and two guys is a crowd". Every Spielberg movie contains a set of "on going lines" for each main character and their consistency hints at the fact that it is Spielberg who is adding them not the many different screenwriters.(Jurassic Park- "we spare no expense")This is one of the methods Spielberg uses to develop an audiences' familiarity with a character. You feel like you know his characters because he allows you to learn a trait that is repeatedly proven true. And in this method is where Spielberg fails. Even though his style works he is not making any effort to change or invent new ways of communicating these ideas. He is only repeating himself. His cartoon type style doesn't seem to mature along with the heavy allusions and symbolism his mature story provides. It makes it harder to take the film seriously. Oliver Stone's telling of this story could have turned this picture into a possible award winner, while Spielberg who seems to be having too much fun won't earn any recognition at all. Though I don't think awards are in Spielberg's agenda for this movie, I still see his maturity as a problem. He wants to be serious but is afraid of losing his audience. Or maybe he just has too much fun.
Spielberg has made what he had called personal cinema before. Amblin' or any film he made before being put through the TV system relies heavily on adult themes. But when he made Jaws he seemed to start a trend he would never turn back on, and one we would never stop paying him for. A movie like Duel doesn't seem like a Spielberg movie in any recent terms.
The film The Terminal relies heavily on Hanks but for good reason. Spielberg seems to project himself through Hanks very well. Spielberg who is as famous for creating likable characters as he is for creating memorable sequences doesn't develop anything as memorable as Dicaprio teaching his French class but he doesn't miss all together either. Spielberg creates many sequences that seem like Hank's SNL skits. One scene involves Hanks and the airport's Supervisor trying to communicate to each other about his country which has ceased to exist. The skit taps into some of the all to familiar "who's on first" Abbot and Costello type miscommunication, all performed very new and fresh. Another involves Hanks making the airport a little more comfy to sleep in, something that could be found in a Keaton or Chaplin movie. And Finally another dinner scene between Jones and Hanks that seems to be Spielberg's take on Wes Anderson's movies as much as 1941 was a Landis film, A.I a Kubric film, and the Police car ride with Hanks telling his knock, knock joke in Catch Me if You Can a Terintino film.
Hank's as well as these many sequences gives the story a Spielbegian heart, not the heart found in Schindler's List or even Catch Me If You Can but a heart all the same. The movie is very likable and any Spielberg/Hanks fan will be pleased. Many scenes made me laugh till I cried.
Spielberg is good at pleasing his audience after... all he once said "I am the audience."