Becoming human!

Finally, after a short gap, I watched an excellent movie two days back. I watched it on DVD, along with my wife, and throughout the movie, she kept wondering "how somebody could conceive such different ideas!". Of course, unlike me, she had never got an opportunity to go beyond the usual Hollywood/Bollywood/Malayalam/Tamil shit! But, now, gradually she is ....

The Movie

The movie that grabbed our whole attention for two hours is "The Terminal". It is directed by Steven Spielberg. And Tom Hanks plays the protagonist Viktor Navorski. Tom Hanks has been one of my favourite actors -- how can I ever forget his class performance in Cast Away, The Road to Perdition, Philadelphia and Forrest Gump!

Well! To summarize the movie, Viktor visits New York for some purpose (that's less important, I think) and he belongs to a fictitious East European country, called Krakozhia. By the time he reached the New York airport terminal, civil war erupts back in his country and the government is overthrown. The United States has not recognized the new government and has cancelled all visa given to the citizens belonging to Krakozhia. Consequently, Viktor cannot enter America. Thus he happens to be "a person with no country", and is simply "unacceptable" to America. He cannot fly back to his country until the war is over. He is forced to live in the airport terminal, his passport being confiscated by the authorities. He is left with no money, no place to stay, and no work. On top of it, he knows very little English!

What I have described is the beginning, probably spanning the first twenty minutes, of the movie. The rest of the movie is about his struggles to survive in the terminal. I interpret the story as the struggle of a lonely man, thrown into a completely strange and, above all, indifferent world. His only objective is his survival. He has no identity, no society, no affiliations and associations, and no friends. Have you ever thought what a man would do in such circumstances? Viktor never resorts to anything immoral, but keeps his dignity as a human being throughout. Naturally, the initial concern must be food, and in the modern society, this means money. He discovers several opportunities in the terminal to earn money (watch the movie -- I don't want to kill your pleasure of anticipations). Later, his efforts are to identify and get himself identified with his surroundings. That is to say, to learn the language, to communicate with others, to make relationships, and so on. He has to begin everything from the scratch, like a new-born child! He has to learn how to become a human being. Fortunately, Viktor is admirably creative in overcoming all the difficulties.

Surely, this movie is something I am not going to forget in my life. My wife enjoyed it very much though it was pretty different from her usual taste!