The Art of Sincerity, Craft, and Optimism. The Terminal is a Delightful Grown-Up Crowdpleaser.

Rating: 9/10 (10 April 2020)

Around film buff circles, the question of the best filmmakers alive seems to invariably lead to names like Nolan, Scorsese, Fincher. My answer is the same it's been since I was 8 years old. The "corny", "obvious", "uncultured" pick; Steven Spielberg. When I posit Steven Spielberg as the greatest living director, there are plenty of films I could use for example. Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, E.T. But the one film I would choose for my thesis is 2004's The Terminal. Why does Spielberg's frothiest comedy prove him as the greatest filmmaker working? Because it illuminates pure directorial talent. When the subject is as inherently powerful as the horrors of warfare or the tolls of human suffering, you may not notice the quality of movie direction. If you really want to see why Spielberg is uncommonly skilled, you have to strip away the extra storytelling weapons. Take the mundanity of, say, an airport terminal, and watch how he makes it appear so magical, sparkling, and alive.
The Terminal stars Tom Hanks as Viktor Navorski, a common traveler from the fictional Eastern European country of Krakozhia, who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. The place happens to be New York's JFK airport. The time? Smack dab in the middle of his country's civil war. Krakozhia is no longer, and little does Navorski know, he's legally trapped in the airport until the war ends. It's hard to describe the elevator pitch for The Terminal. It is based partially on a real life figure, but Spielberg takes the bones of that story to indulge in a Carpra-esque Hollywood entertainer. The Terminal is a lot of things, all of them delightful: a fish-out-of-water comedy, a crowd-pleasing romance, and a tear-jerking character piece. The dramatic pull of the film takes shape, we realize, in the form of Viktor Navorski's mission to get the autograph of a famous New York jazz musician. But that's not exactly what the movie is about.
The story serves as an outlet for a collection of aforementioned fish-out-of-water scenes. Now would be a good time to highlight Hanks, who contributes heartily to the value of these scenes. Considering his talent as a dramatic actor, we tend to forget that he is one of the very best light comedians. Here he gets to go full Hanks ahead on the comedy. With his endearingly dorky Eastern European accent, Hanks delivers a winning one-man-show performance, pitched at just the right angle for the tone Spielberg is working with. Tom Hanks is someone who knows how to play broad without sacrificing sweetness.
But more impressive than Hanks, or any of the other great supporting performances (Catherine Zeta-Jones reminds one of the classy Hollywood starlets of the 40s and 50s, and Stanley Tucci is an endlessly watchable baddie.) is Steven Spielberg's direction. He had an entire airport terminal set built specifically for this movie, and the way he populates, stages, and moves his camera around it, is deceptively virtuosic. Because again, nothing incredibly special happens within the terminal's confines. No more than a series of routines that we see through the puppy dog eyes of Hanks' character. And yet, every moment of The Terminal is invigorating. It's just light entertainment, but the way Spielberg carries us through it visually, it feels life-giving. There are shots here, of tiles on a bathroom wall, of tv monitors, or common bookstore facades that are as exciting as anything in Blade Runner 2049, Interstellar, or any other "most beautiful movie ever". There is a sequence where Navorski figures out how to acquire change to buy fast food, and it's electrifying. Others can try, but no one else can make that claim. Steven Spielberg could literally direct Hanks making a sandwich and I would be on the edge of my seat.
The film is quite long. It would be unforgivably tedious and indulgent had it been directed by anyone else. But the greatest living director deserves to indulge. I could watch The Terminal for days. In all it's cheesy, earnest glory. It's a real delight. An old-fashioned crowd-pleaser that most people are scared to take a swing at in this century. Maybe that's because no one else has the directorial swagger of Steven Spielberg. Stripped of everything except a couple of great movie stars and a professional comedic screenplay, he shows how invaluable his cinematic instincts are. Airport Burger King has never looked so good.
85/100