The Aviator Review
by Jerry Saravia (faust668 AT aol DOT com)January 10th, 2005
THE AVIATOR (2004)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
Viewed on January 7th, 2004
RATING: Three stars
It is difficult to surmise the weaknesses in Martin Scorsese's latest endeavor, "The Aviator," because there are so many things right with the film. And yet, something keeps biting away at me, something I can't quite grasp a hold of. I figured it out after a few hours. Scorsese gets us so close inside the mind of Howard Hughes that you can't quite breathe, wondering what else the real-life billionaire will cook up next. It is the mind of a megalomaniac that you rather not visit, but it is quite an adventurous journey for Scorsese and for the audience. This is not a dismissal of the film, just my own perception of the diseased mind we are asked to enter.
That mind is Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio), the eccentric, thoroughly capricious Texan billionaire who inherited his wealth from oil drill bits. At the beginning of the film, after a brief flashback where he is bathed by his mother, Hughes is already up in arms in Hollywood in the late 20's filming his World War I picture, "Hell's Angels." He is equipped with 24 cameras and needs two more, though he fails to obtain them from rival studio MGM. He spends three years making the film, finally reshooting the whole damn thing so he can have sound. How daring a filmmaker was Hughes? He would stand in the cockpit of a flying plane and hand-hold the camera to get the best shot (I bet you Mr. Scorsese never tried that). He also has a fascination with clouds that can form the appearance of breasts, and goes so far as to hire a meteorologist (Ian Holm) to find out when such clouds may form in a cloudless sky! After so much effort and so much money (a 2 million-plus budget!), Hughes has a success and enters the glamor and the glitz of Hollywood. He also builds airplanes, including the largest plane ever, the Hercules aka the Spruce Goose (a name Hughes hated). He also picks up many women along the way, including actress Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett) who slowly catches on to his eccentricities despite admiring his love of flying planes, Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale), whom he later places under surveillance, and Faith Domergue (Kelli Garner), a 15-year-old wanna-be starlet. Never mind that Hughes had an affair with Carole Lombard or Cary Grant - his bisexuality is kept closed in this PG-13 flick.
It isn't so much that things go downhill for Hughes in this film, because they don't. He is the same person he was at the beginning - a rich man who could do anything he wanted, buy anything he wanted, bed any woman he wanted, build as many planes as he wanted, buy airlines like TWA, make movies for periods longer than a Stanley Kubrick production, talk his way out of Senate and MPAA hearings and so on. He could do all this because he could, and he could get away with it. The film starts in 1927 and ends in 1947. No mention is made of the Hughes of the 60's and 70's, the period where a fake biography was written by Clifford Irving, the Las Vegas bungalow Hughes stayed in as a recluse from the world, the very world he knew was changing. It is these latter aspects of Hughes's life that I thought would interest Scorsese so much more. Recall how Scorsese dealt with Jake LaMotta's earlier boxing days with the pathetic later years where Jake was nothing more than a sadly unfunny comedian working at low-rent joints for pennies in "Raging Bull." Also recall the coke-fueled paranoia of Henry Hill's last days as a Mafia drug abuser and dealer in "GoodFellas." In each of those films, as well as "Casino," we sensed the undergoing changes of the main characters as they reached a high point and then descended lower than one would ever hope. In "The Aviator," Hughes is on a power trip and we never sense that he is losing control, even when he starts repeating phrases or becomes more and more finicky about germs, etc. His friends try to protect him but we know things will only get worse in the wave of the future.
Like most of Scorsese's films, we feel the way Howard Hughes does at any moment. When he refuses to touch a bathroom doorknob until someone enters, we sense his fear of collecting germs. When he notices a food particle on someone's shoulder, he asks for it be removed with a cloth and have the cloth deposited in a wastebasket. When he goes off the deep end by having his urine collected in glass bottles while standing naked in a movie theatre basking in the glory of his film "Hell's Angels," we sense the growing alienation from friends and from himself. Nobody knows better how to get inside someone's head than Scorsese - we are talking about the man who brought us inside Travis Bickle's ticking time bomb in "Taxi Driver." These factors weigh in heavily, hitting like you ton of bricks and either you go along with it, or you don't. There is something to be said about DiCaprio's own forehead in this film - something about it burned a hole through my own head! This is not a weakness of his performance, just that DiCaprio's forehead started to bother me shortly after that horrifying plane crash sequence. I suppose I just wanted Hughes to calm down and not be so relentless. The man never sat down for a second, always cooking up his next dream, his next ambition or enterprise. When Ava Gardner can't even calm him down, then you know you are witnessing a dreamer with no limits because he has the wealth to do anything.
"The Aviator" details the Hollywood of the 30's with complete adoration, including some delightful sequences in the Cocoanut Grove club where we catch a glimpse of Errol Flynn (Jude Law). Still, for a director who made us feel the allure of the Copacabana in "GoodFellas," these earlier sections of the film lack much bravado or headlong excitement (and the two-toned Technicolor process can be tough on the eyes. Relax, peas are green, not aquamarine). I felt somewhat disconnected from these earlier scenes, though they are a remarkable recreation of a time America forgot. Using Benny Goodman's version of "Moonglow" has a becalming effect, especially during the scene where Howard takes Kate for a flight above L.A.
The movie, however, picks up tremendous pace when Katharine Hepburn is introduced and starts a love affair with Hughes (even meeting her family in Connecticut in the only humorous section of the movie). Blanchett conveys Hepburn's mannerisms and high-pitched guffaws flawlessly. Her best moment is a quiet one when she tells Hughes that everyone else sees them as freaks. Kate Beckinsale's Ava Gardner is not as impressive and the bulk of her performance seems to have been left on the cutting room floor. Why she stuck around with Hughes and put up with his wildly off-balance nature when they presumably never had sex is questionable. And the character of Faith is so short-changed that if you blink, you'll forget she was ever there.
"The Aviator" is occasionally entertaining, has terrifically authentic period flavor and one frighteningly realistic plane crash that will make you squeamish about ever flying with an experienced pilot (don't forget this is Scorsese directing). The actors are generally superb, including Alan Alda as the confrontational Senator Brewster and Alec Baldwin as Juan Trippe, a smooth Hughes nemesis from Pan Am who tries to uncover Hughes's plans. Of course, I cannot leave out DiCaprio who bears an uncanny resemblance to Hughes, especially during the Senate hearings. DiCaprio shows the man's drive effortlessly and keeps you on edge wondering what he will do next to wow the public. But we never sense much more than Hughes's own growing mental illness and what it is like to have the fear of touching a doorknob. The movie is told in fragments of Hughes's life, but perhaps the scope of this man is too ambitious for any one film (a sequel may not be such a bad idea). The mystery and the complex nature of Hughes continues to baffle many, and I suppose this film will only fuel that enigma. Scorsese understands all too well the enigma surrounding Hughes the perfectionist, and his obsessive compulsive behavior (shades of this exists in De Niro's Ace Rothstein character in "Casino").
"The Aviator" is quite good but it is not at the top of the game of what Scorsese can really deliver - at least, it is more focused than his Dalai Lama biography, "Kundun." The mammoth territory of this tragic man is too overwhelming and yet too truncated, even for Scorsese. Others might be too disturbed by the man and his drive, as I was. You be the judge.
For more reviews, check out JERRY AT THE MOVIES at:
http://www.geocities.com/faustus_08520/Jerry_at_the_Movies.html
BIO on the author: http://www.geocities.com/faustus_08520/index.html
Email: [email protected] , [email protected]
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
