Protagonist in "The Terminal"

The Terminal is a wonderful Spielberg film, inspired by a true event. A visitor to NY becomes stuck at JFK due to his country falling into chaos. This film should be analyzed by the Dramatica Users Group at some point.

Who is the protagonist? Popping it into the player, I instinctively thought the visitor, played by Tom Hanks, is. Perhaps I’m jumping the gun. The JFK acting commissioner tries several methods to coax him out the terminal’s doors into NYC, but the visitor doesn’t. Since the visitor eventually does at the movie’s conclusion, and since the theme seemed to be about people being stuck in their individual “cracks” — the name of his country happens to be Krakozhia — I believed this to be the goal.

Then I remembered something which irked me about the acting commissioner’s mindset. He wasn’t just prejudiced about Viktor; he was trying to push him into the situation of being caught by the authorities and deported anyway. This was something I didn’t catch in initial viewing.

So, Viktor, as the protagonist, is struggling in the crack so that he could legally obtain that final element we see in the last few minutes of the movie. In fact, after that, he returns to Krakosia. By coaxing him into a position to be caught and deported, the acting commissioner is hindering/stopping those efforts.