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The Aviator
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale, Alec Baldwin, Alan Alda, Ian Holm, Gwen Stefani
Miramax Films
2004, 170 mins
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| As a 'great director', with his best work now seemingly behind him, Martin Scorsese has long been adrift, unable to find the subject matter and the special angle that
would give him a movie to match up to his former triumphs. His last film, Gangs of New York, was an attempt to do Goodfellas
in stovepipe hats, but it lacked that movie's sense of authenticity and gripping narrative. Now in The Aviator he has gone for a
biopic of Howard Hughes, a figure with both the celebrity of a Jake La Motta and the aberrant psychology of a Travis Bickle.
One might think that Hughes would be an ideal Scorsese subject, yet Hughes' world of exalted privilege is far different territory to the shady and colourful habitats of
Scorsese's usual Italian American characters, and for much of the early part of the film the director feels like an outsider, pressing his nose up against the glass of Hughes' life,
feeling for a way in, a handle on the story - whatever the story is, exactly. |
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| We start with a glimpse of childhood, a scene with Hughes and his over-anxious mother, there to point the way - rather obviously - to the obsessive-compulsiveness of later
life. Then we're into the making of Hell's Angels, Hughes' ridiculously overblown and over-budget homage to World War I pilots. Life
in the jazz age of the late Twenties is painted in broad strokes, a feast of opulent cinematography, production and costume design. Prominently
featured are two of Hughes' high profile love affairs, with Cate Blanchett doing a passable imitation of Katherine Hepburn and Kate Beckinsale doing a feisty but less convincing take
on Ava Gardener. But it is Hughes' aviation ambitions that make up the core of the film, and in several memorable sequences, precision
built using a combination of live footage and CGI, so that the joins are hard to see, we witness Hughes test-piloting his latest creations and crashing to earth with destructive
bravura, on one occasion demolishing half of Beverly Hills in the process. |
| Yet despite all these fireworks going off, the film is curiously slow and plodding, and beleaguered by an overall lack of focus. For
a lot of the time it just doesn't feel like a Martin Scorsese film, and could be the work of most any competent director. What it does
feel like is a Miramax product, a large-scale, lavish made-to-measure Oscar contender, with all the pieces of the clockwork dutifully well-honed, but the whole somehow short on real
verve and soul.
However it does pick up in the second half when the cracks in Hughes' personality begin to widen, and at last Scorsese has something to really get his teeth into.
At this point the whole of Hughes' earlier life registers as mere exposition, a phase we had to get through to arrive here, and perhaps a better, edgier movie could have been
spun featuring just this period, with the rest as backstory. The scenes involving Hughes' paranoia and obsessiveness, and his particular
compulsion for hand washing, are surely handled, and briefly we see the master who gave us the mental collapse of Travis Bickle once more at work.
Very good too is Hughes' jousting match with Senator Brewster, a superbly aged and oleaginous Alan Alda, who as the agent of Hughes' arch-enemy Pan Am boss Juan Trippe
(Alec Baldwin), tries to force Hughes to sell out his aviation interests and concede defeat. Here we get a real sense of Hughes' singularity as a character, barking mad one minute, yet forceful, commanding and charismatic the next.
Despite the handicap of an enduringly boyish physique, Leonardo DiCaprio does well in transporting Hughes through the years, screwing-up and furrowing his face, and
affecting the stiff body-language of middle-aged angst. His performance as an older man has something of the majesty of James Dean's in Giant,
and, aged and moustachioed, he seems more like the real Hughes, as though at last he'd grown into the oversized garment of the role.
So is The Aviator the film to lift Martin Scorsese right back up to the top of the pedestal? A good effort, but not
quite. Definitely a film of two halves, certainly a worthy spectacle, but ultimately more an assemblage of some good moments than a
cohesive satisfying whole.
© Roger Keen 2005 |
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