Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks) is stranded. While Navorski was in the air between Krakozhia and America, a military coup toppled his country’s government, sending out Kafkaesque ripples resulting in the suspension of all passports and visas. From a bureaucratic perspective, Navorski has become "a citizen of nowhere". Unable to either enter America or return home to war-torn Krakozhia he finds himself in a kind of limbo, a ‘twilight zone’ as one character puts it. It is a situation that many of Spielberg’s protagonists often find themselves in. In E.T. (1984) an extra-terrestrial is stranded on Earth unable to integrate into this alien environment or to return to his home planet; in Empire of the Sun (1987) a young boy, separated from his parents at the outbreak of WWII, finds himself incarcerated in a Japanese POW camp; in Hook (1991) a middle-aged Peter Pan struggles to rediscover his own identity in a Neverland that has become as strange to him as a distant country. In each case Spielberg’s characters are drawn, usually by forces beyond their control, into a limbo which is both alien and threatening, and to which they must adapt if they are to survive. And in each case Spielberg shows how they find a small crack, a crevice, a space in which they not only manage to live, but to thrive. Navorski’s limbo is the International Lounge of JFK airport, a place in which he is forced to remain, even though everyone else passes through, either coming or going, but never staying. Nevertheless, he manages to find cracks in which he can express himself. Spielberg constructs his limbos as temporary states which must eventually come to an end. In Navorski’s case this not only means he can resume his normal life, but also, that he must leave behind the deep friendships he has formed with people who work in or around the terminal -- friendships that Spielberg constructs as having an authenticity not normally found in everyday life. This breaking of attachments is a thematic thread that turns up again and again in Spielberg’s work. Seen in this light, I notice the characteristic optimism of Spielberg’s work less, and its elements of bittersweet poignancy more. In The Terminal it is the friendships Navorski forms, the small moments he shares with others, that he will take away and remember. Like the glowing light in ET’s belly -- a visualization of his sadness at having to say goodbye knowing that he will never see Elliott again -- so too, many of Spielberg’s protagonists could be described as having a kind of ‘glowing light in their bellies’ when it is time to say goodbye, a light that isn’t simply representative of their sadness, but of the fact that they will carry within themselves, for the rest of their lives, memories of the people they met and loved.

‘Self-sacrifice’ is another thematic thread that Spielberg weaves around his characters while in limbo. Think of Oskar Schindler (Schindler's List, 1993), who is ready to sacrifice everything he has, who is ready to give up his life, in order to save as many Jewish lives as possible. At the end of the film Schindler is presented by those he saved with a gold ring inscribed with the words, "He who saves one life, saves the world entire". Whether in the tension and chaos of war, or in the organized emptiness of an airport terminal, Spielberg’s characters find meaning in life, no, more than that, they give their lives meaning, by being willing to sacrifice their own well-being or their own happiness to help another person. Navorski’s chance comes when he is asked to act as a translator for a Russian man who breaks down in tears and becomes hysterical on learning that the medicine he is taking to his dying father will be confiscated because he has not filled out the required forms. In terms of Spielberg’s narrative exploration of the theme of ‘self-sacrifice’, this is perhaps the most important thing Navorski does during his nine months in the terminal. (And I think the nine months is symbolical -- when Navorski leaves the terminal it is definitely like a birth -- and all Spielberg’s characters grow in the time they spend in their womb-like limbo.)

Steven Spielberg’s films need to be watched in a movie theatre, as opposed to at home on VHS or DVD. And not just his large-scale action-epics such as the Indiana Jones trilogy or the first two Jurassic Park films. I think that Spielberg’s smaller-scale character-dramas, such as Catch Me If You Can (2002), are also enhanced by being seen in the setting of a theatre. In the case of The Terminal its thematic focus on a character caught in limbo is sharpened by being viewed within a theatre which also places audiences in a kind of temporary limbo insulated, at least for the time of the screening, from the outside world and the normality of everyday life. Spielberg seems to hope that we, not unlike the characters he is depicting, will take something from the limbo of the cinema and the films we view there, something that emerges from Spielberg’s particular blend of love, sadness, pity, exaltation, sorrow and humour, and something that will leave its mark upon the shape of our lives.