The Aviator Review
by Ryan Ellis (flickershows AT hotmail DOT com)January 10th, 2005
The Aviator
reviewed by Ryan Ellis
January 6, 2005
My Tagline---Hughes had vision, we had bifocals
"I have vision and the rest of the world wears bifocals." Butch Cassidy said that, but it could have come straight from the mouth of Howard Hughes. When his brain wasn't just a crazy mush, the infamous maverick millionaire was constantly reaching for higher heights. He wanted to make the biggest movies, fly the biggest (and fastest) planes, and bed the biggest of the movie beauties. Martin Scorsese's 'The Aviator' lionizes the Texas eccentric and manages to make him sympathetic---often heroic---even when he's just flipping out while alone in his screening room.
Scorsese certainly doesn't let Hughes off the hook, though. The director of movies about Jake LaMotta, the Dalai Lama, and Jesus Christ isn't about to present a portrait of misunderstood brilliance without revealing that those misunderstood types can be assholes too. A 20-ish Hughes waltzed into Hollywood as the son of a drill bit tycoon from the Lone Star state. He had a lot of money to burn and he burned it, nearly going bankrupt while shooting his epic war film, 'Hell's Angels'. Scorsese IS Hughes in these early scenes. What movie savant (and maverick director, in his own right) can't relate to a guy battling everyone and everything to shoot his movie, whether or not he has enough money to do it?
John Logan's fine script (better than most of the generic stuff he's written before) keeps coming back to the same obsession---flying. According to this film, Hughes wanted to be known as an aviator, first and foremost. Hollywood was fun, but flying was serious. He loved flying so much, he kept test-piloting his planes...even after he crashed one that nearly killed him.
[For that matter, his reckless filmmaking killed 3 pilots while making 'Hell's Angels'.] I'm sure this movie leaves a lot out (none of Hughes' marriages are mentioned, for instance), but we get quite a detailed look into the life of "the richest man in the world".
Perhaps Hughes was much, much worse than he's portrayed here. [What do I know? Most of my knowledge of the guy comes from that Simpsons episode where Mr. Burns builds a casino and turns into a germophobic Howard Hughes knockoff.] The period details are fantastic (the story covers about 20 years, from the mid-20s to the later-40s) and no Miramax expense was spared to put you right into the middle of all the flights and the fights and the parties and the other craziness. If there's something important missing, at least they've spun a fabulous Hollywood yarn in lieu of absolute authenticity.
It must have irked some of the "it must be authentic" naysayers because Leonardo DiCaprio plays Hughes. It'll bother them even more to know that he does a good job. In fact, DiCaprio surpasses any expectations I had for him in this part. He doesn't overdo the obsessive compulsive side of this whacko character. You could make an entire movie just about the bottles of urine, the fingernails, the germs, the paranoia, and the devil-may-care attitude towards money. I liked the way Leo played such a towering historical figure. He finally looks more like a man-actor, rather than the boy-superstar we've known for so long. It isn't always true that the star (who's in almost every scene) is the best thing in the movie. I'll throw it out there and say that it IS true this time.
Hughes filled up the gossip rags with his playboy antics, especially during his long love affair with Katharine Hepburn. She's the only person who even comes close to understanding what's going on inside this tumultuous man. Funny, then, that the legendary actress would be played with such surface-level indifference by one of the best actresses around (Cate Blanchett). No doubt, she has a hoot aping Hepburn. Most of the big laughs come in Blanchett's first scene, which turns the whole movie upside down.
She sinks right into the part and even does a good job of nailing that odd Kate Hepburn accent. All the same, I'm not sure if it's a terrific performance or just a cheesy mimic. Whichever, she's enjoying herself and it's always fun to see that actors can have fun acting.
The cast just keeps on coming. John C. Reilly, Ian Holm, Danny Huston, and Matt Ross play significant members of Hughes' enormous staff. Each of them is okay, but they all wind up doing the same thing---reacting with incredulousness at their boss' erratic behaviour. Kate Beckinsale plays Ava Gardner, Hughes' new love after Hepburn ditches him for Spencer Tracy.
Beckinsale doesn't have much to do and she does nothing about as well as she can. Jude Law gets a juicy scene as Errol Flynn, then he's gone. It's one and out for Willem Dafoe as a tabloid photographer too. There's only so many actors you can jam into a film that approaches 3 hours, but those two guys might have played off DiCaprio beautifully if given a better opportunity.
Alec Baldwin and Alan Alda wear the bad guy suits in 'The Aviator'. Baldwin is Juan Trippe, the arrogant head of Pan-Am Airlines and rival to Hughes' TWA plane company. Alda is at his smarmiest here as Senator Brewster, Trippe's friend and lapdog. The climax of the movie comes during an investigation headed up by Brewster. He's trying to destroy Hughes'
reputation (claiming he was a war profiteer in WWII), so that Trippe can buy out the competition. Hughes defeats them, even as he's battling a breakdown right there during the hearing. Speaking of villains, I shouldn't forget to give Edward Herrmann some points for playing Joseph Breen, MPAA censor and apparent boobaphobic. He only gets one speech, but it says everything about the inconsistency of censorship in Hollywood.
These are the most F/X I've ever seen in a Scorsese picture. Is that a good sign? Well, he's so technically proficient anyway that seeing him work with big budgets in recent years is almost off-putting. He never had much money during his best years, but Harvey Weinstein opened up the vault for 'Gangs Of New York' and 'The Aviator'. It's just that it's a strange fit. Scorsese has passed 60 and directed two consecutive movies that, although excellent, almost don't even look like his work. While his friend and contemporary, Steven Spielberg, has gone dark in recent years, Scorsese has become about as mainstream as he could ever be. 'Gangs Of New York' was a love triangle set against violence & death (ie. 'Titantic' without the boat) and 'The Aviator' is an old-fashioned biopic.
I'm not complaining, though. Mainstream Marty is not fluffy socks and limp dishrags. There's still an edge. After all, even though this is not the ferocious Scorsese we grew up with, he still likes a dark ending. I heard one viewer beefing about that later, but she's missing the point. For every up in Hughes' life, there was a down. It would be dishonest to fade to black with him grinning as his Hercules (better known as the "Spruce Goose", the world's biggest airplane) makes its one & only flight. Sure, the final sequence is a downer, but we know he eventually cracked up and spent years locked away in a Vegas hotel room with his precious germs. Like so much of this great director's work, 'The Aviator' is a powerful and passionate (and, yes, flawed) film about a powerful and passionate and flawed man.
Scorsese is at his best when making movies about outsiders. Most of his leading characters are men who don't fit in with what's going on around them. Maybe that's why he gets such great performances out of his actors. If anybody knows about struggling to fit in, it's an actor. Hughes is never more devastated than when he's at his most uninhibited, while buck naked in his screening room. DiCaprio embodies the young & dashing Howard Hughes, but he also does a convincing job of playing the muttering & naked guy obsessing in the dark. Knowing about Scorsese's own near-tragic past in the '70s, he must see a lot of himself in his main character.
I recall Scorsese once marvelled that you don't really know Kane at the end of 'Citizen Kane'. It's the same with Hughes here. In effect, Martin Scorsese has made his 'Citizen Kane'. Not in accomplishment, mind you, but in subject matter. No, 'The Aviator' is not in the same ballpark as Orson Welles' masterpiece, but the real Howard Hughes is remarkably similar to the fictional Charles Foster Kane. Both had everything, then self-destructed.
And both of them had vision. The rest of us can't see the Spruce Goose for the tiny trees.
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