Just window dressing? I thought it was odd.
shareIt was an manifestation of how the travel and stress is affecting Hanks' character.
donkeywranglertothestars.com
@sly_3
It was the 60's. Lots of flower power pollen.
shareIt seemed overplayed for something that eventually turned out to be nothing.
Unless there's something about Donovan's real life story where the cold has more significance, the nearest I could tell is that it was just used to set up his exhaustion when he gets back home. But that could have been done just as well by a few seconds of lengthy travel, which combined with his brutal stay, would still make sense.
I took a couple of things from this. The juxtaposition of Donovan's cold and Abel's sniffing seems to draw them together, maybe make each more sympathetic to the other's plight. IIRC Abel was sniffing at the beginning and all the way thru, so it might have been more allergies on his part.
But the cold itself, while probably real (in the context of the story) and if anything downplayed (any cold that is a plot point in a movie is usually exaggerated), was used to propel the story. Donovan repeatedly refers to it and uses it as his reason to hurry things along with the negotiations. I wasn't sure if it was used as a trick to seem like just a regular guy who wanted to go home, or if he really was suffering enough just to want to get out of there.
www.freerice.com
And then the CIA Agent caught the cold....
shareThe Soviet block was notorious for air pollution. They built industrial and coal plants and just let it rip. I remember a National Geographic issue on the subject in Russia. The ground and buildings were black for blocks around a plant that made carbon black. Town people there hawked black stuff out of their noses like coal miners.
I also remembered living in the area of Downey California, where Goodyear and Firestone plants made tires. My car would like someone sprinkled pepper on it and I picked up a slight cough that quit after I moved out of state. During this period the LA corner said a dead woman he was investigating had lived in LA for about one year. He based that on her polluted lungs saying living there was like smoking one pack of cigarettes per day or week. I don't remember which.
I don't know everything. Neither does anyone else