The Terminal

The Terminal (2004) was inspired by a real man, and his story is much longer and ends far more bitterly than the film. Mehran Karimi Nasseri was an Iranian refugee. When his documents were lost he became unable to enter any country, and in August 1988 he settled into Terminal 1 at Charles de Gaulle Airport. He lived there for eighteen years. In 2006 his health failed and he was hospitalised, after which he spent years in shelters in Paris. In September 2022 he returned to the same airport and died there of a heart attack two months later. Spielberg bought the rights to the story in 2003. The film makes a comedy out of that material. A man called Viktor Navorski lands in New York just as a coup takes place at home; his passport becomes void and he can neither enter nor return. He starts living in the terminal, finds work, makes friends. The terminal is not real. A full scale airport was built inside a hangar, complete with working shops and real brands. Tom Hanks plays a man who cannot speak the language, and most of the comedy comes from the body rather than the dialogue. The fair criticism is that it softens the hopelessness of the real story completely and turns the situation of a refugee into a warm fable. It runs 128 minutes. Good for: Spielberg, warm comedy, and Tom Hanks. Less good for: anyone who knows the real case will find the register too light; the pace is slow and the romance is thin.