The Terminal

Last week, I watched The Terminal again and noticed some aspects that further emphasize a couple points I've previously written about.

In January 2019, I wrote that Viktor Navorski's motivation to help Mr. Milodragovich comes in part from a sympathy for and identification with his paternal affection.  (Milodragovich is trying to procure medicine for his father, demonstrating the same devotion that Navorski shows in his promise to complete his father's autograph collection.)  Milodragovich's name seems to indicate this quality that he shares with Navorski.  According to this site, drag means dear or precious and -ovich means "son of," so the core of the name denotes something like "son of a dear one."  This site explains that the milo- prefix means mercy or grace.

Two years ago, I wrote about Dixon's reaction to Navorski's gift.  He doesn't accept the fish that Navorski tries to give him because it's bigger than any of his own and would make him look bad in comparison, just as Navorski had inadvertently made Dixon look bad in front of the review board by finding a way within the legal system to allow Milodragovich to take the medicine for his father, essentially undermining Dixon's authority.  When Navorski offers Dixon the fish, he says, "Fish for wall."  I realized while watching the movie this time that his comment has the same structure and lack of articles as his earlier "Medicine for goat" from the Milodragovich situation.  This similarity may remind Dixon of the embarrassing event and further stoke his anger towards Navorski.

The Terminal

Earlier this month, I was thinking about The Terminal again, and I re-watched it in order to look into a couple points (also because I've been watching a lot of Steven Spielberg movies recently).

The second time that Viktor Navorski meets Amelia Warren, he lends her his handkerchief.  When she returns it, she asks him, "What's BH?" mistaking the Cyrillic letters of his monogram for Latin letters (in full, his name is something like Виктор Наворски in Cyrillic).  In a small way, her assumption that the letters are Latin matches what she says about herself shortly before this:  "I always see men the way I wanna see 'em."

Later, the two meet by chance in Borders, where Amelia is buying a book about Napoleon.  She tells Viktor that Napoleon is "one of my favorites," and Viktor subsequently develops his own interest in Napoleon.  His primary motivation seems to be a desire to have something in common with Amelia, but he may also identify with Napoleon because their situations are similar.  Amelia tells him, "After he loses the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon isolates himself on the tiny island of St. Helena."  (According to Britannica, Napoleon became a recluse while he was exiled there, so this is isolation even within confinement.)  To some degree, Viktor is also isolated because he's stuck in the terminal.

[The Terminal is my favorite movie, and I've written about it multiple times now.  Click here for all of my posts about it.]

The Terminal

I re-watched The Terminal again last week (it's become something of a tradition for me to watch it in mid-January), and I realized that the title has a sort of dual application.  Since the movie takes place almost entirely in an airport, the word terminal is intended primarily as the noun, but to some degree, the adjective terminal (in the sense "relating to the end") also applies since the end of the war in Krakozhia is what Viktor Navorski must wait for before he can enter the United States.

Years ago, I realized that the movie's tagline ("Life is waiting") also contains an ambiguity.  The phrase "is waiting" could be either a copulative verb and a gerund functioning as a predicate nominative (so that the whole clause could be rendered as "life = waiting") or a present progressive verb (emphasizing the durative nature more than the simple form "waits" does).

The Terminal

Earlier this week, I watched The Terminal again (because the movie starts around this time of year), and I realized the significance of a detail.

Shortly after the situation with Mr. Milodragovich (which I wrote about a number of years ago), Viktor Navorski shows up at Frank Dixon's office and tries to give him a Virgin Isle sailfish for his wall, apparently trying to mollify Dixon's anger.  Navorski must have remembered the other fish displayed on Dixon's wall, visible in a scene earlier in the movie when the two first meet:

The fish that Navorski offers, however, is considerably larger than Dixon's fish (briefly glimpsed again in this scene as the camera pans with Dixon as he sits down), and this is significant.

Immediately after the problem with Mr. Milodragovich, Dixon had threatened Navorski as a punishment for cheating the system and allowing Mr. Milodragovich to leave with the medicines for his father but without the necessary documentation.  "Do you think this is a game?  Do you think I need an excuse to put you back in that cell, to keep you there for another five years?  You go to war with me, and you go to war with the United States of America."  Dixon made these threats in front of the review board that was there to inspect the airport and assess him for the role of chief field commissioner, a position he's wanted for years, and now he blames Navorski for making him look bad.

In this particular scene, he repeats some of his threats:  "Let me make you a promise, Viktor, and this is a promise that comes from a man who is stuck here, a man who may be stuck here for the next ten years.  From now on, you and I are partners.  If I stay, you stay.  You will not set one foot in New York City, not a single toe in the United States of America.  Do you understand what I am saying to you?"

Navorski answers, "Yes, you don't like [the] fish."

It's sort of a humorous response, but it can also be taken in a somewhat more literal sense.  Dixon doesn't like the fish that Navorski freely offers because it's bigger than any of his own and makes him look bad in comparison, just as he did in front of the review board.

The Terminal

I re-watched The Terminal last week and noticed the significance of a visual element.  With very few exceptions, everyone who interacts with Viktor Navorski wears a uniform, even if it's a loose definition of the term (Dixon, for example, doesn't really wear a uniform, but he's always shown in a suit).  Viktor, on the other hand, while ostensibly living out of his suitcase, shows quite a bit of variation in what he wears.  The sartorial sameness that everyone else exhibits visually represents Viktor's being stuck "in a crack" and having to wait.  Nothing around him changes very much, even including the clothes that everyone wears.

I re-watched the movie to-day in order to confirm this, and I noticed an-other small detail I'd never seen before.  In the scene where Dixon is interrogating Amelia, Viktor is visible in the security camera footage in the background, holding a bouquet of flowers and waiting for Amelia:

(Here's a post I wrote about The Terminal last year.)

The Terminal

A couple weeks ago, I re-watched The Terminal and noticed that - in a way - Viktor Navorski's encounter with Mr. Milodragovich illustrates Navorski's chief motivation for the whole film.

Mr. Thurman's explaining the situation to Dixon summarizes the scene well: "When the 9:12 from Toronto landed, they found four prescriptions without an MPL [medicinal purchase license].  They tried to take the pills away from him, and he went nuts.  There he is.  We think they're for his father."  The interpreter is an hour away, and Thurman has the idea to use Navorski as a translator.

At first Navorski explains that Milodragovich says that the medicine is for his father, but when it seems that the medicines are going to be taken away from Milodragovich because he doesn't have the correct documentation, Viktor stops everyone and says, "I make mistake."  The medicine is actually for a goat.  Dixon is suspicious of this and accuses Viktor of cheating the system.  He says Viktor has been reading the forms, specifically "the one that says if it's an animal, he doesn't need the medicinal purchase license."  In the end, Milodragovich himself says "Medicine for goat" and is allowed to take the pills with him.

When I watched the film previously, I thought this scene simply illustrates Navorski's compassion for others.  He sees that Milodragovich is in a difficult situation, so he helps him out of it.  When I watched the film again recently, however, I realized that the scene has a deeper meaning than that.  Navorski identifies with Milodragovich's mission to procure medicine for his ailing father because Navorski made a promise to his own father that he would collect the last signature from the group of jazz musicians in the photograph.  While Navorski's compassion certainly influences his actions here, his paternal dedication - a quality that he sees in Milodragovich - is also evident.