- If you're not a member why not Start a FREE trial
- Already a member? Sign in here
- Get our newsletter
- Help
|
The Aviator
It says something about Howard Hughes that he's been played on screen quite convincingly by such different actors as Tommy Lee Jones, Jason Robards, Dean Stockwell, Terry O'Quinn, and now Leonardo DiCaprio in 'The Aviator'. Hughes (1905-1976) was one of the most fascinating figures of the twentieth century - even though he was born a multi-millionaire, the sort of good fortune which doesn't usually make for strong character. He was also one of the most famous. But he was a recluse for the last half of his life, so we don't have a very clear picture of what he really looked like. He's up for grabs: a potential feast for any actor. He's become a mythic figure in the public imagination: like Rumpelstiltskin with his long, curling fingernails and unkempt hair; or like 'Citizen Kane' with his boundless wealth and lonely isolation (William Randolph Hearst, the model for Kane, was a friend of Hughes). 
Beyond that, we know he was a legendary womaniser, fixated on Hollywood stars and starlets. Among his conquests were Ava Gardner, Ginger Rogers, Bette Davis, Lana Turner, Rita Hayworth, Jane Greer, Gene Tierney, Linda Darnell, Yvonne De Carlo, Olivia de Havilland and Kathryn Grayson. But the love of his life, according to Martin Scorsese's new film, was Katharine Hepburn, played with the appropriate patrician vigour by Cate Blanchett. No wonder Hollywood's most famous Don Juan, Warren Beatty, always dreamed of playing him. If the tabloids are to be believed - and in this instance, I think they probably are - DiCaprio is no slouch in that department either. But while it pays lip service to Hughes' prodigious sex life, 'The Aviator' has higher things on its mind. Save for a brief prologue, the action takes place between 1927 and 1950, Hughes' golden period. First he took Hollywood by storm, directing the independent blockbuster 'Hell's Angels', and producing such hits as the original version of 'Scarface' and the comedy 'The Front Page'. Then he turned his attention to the new technology of aviation, where he became the most famous flier since Charles Lindbergh - today you would have to mix Michael Schumacher with Ronaldo and Richard Branson to come up with the same level of fame. More than that, he was a visionary industrialist and engineer in his own right. 
It's this version of Hughes - young, reckless, and brilliant - which galvanizes Scorsese and DiCaprio's biopic, which moves at such a terrific lick 170 minutes fly by. Scorsese - whose glittering career encompasses such milestones as 'Taxi Driver', 'Raging Bull' and 'GoodFellas' - is one of the most film-literate directors in the world. Maybe the most. So it's no surprise that the recreation of Hollywood's golden age is carried off with astonishing pizzazz. A run-in with the censors, who were outraged by the prominence of Jane Russell's mammaries in Hughes' western 'The Outlaw', is a comic highlight. Yet it feels as much DiCaprio's film as the director's. He produced it, and initially offered the script (by 'Gladiator' scribe John Logan) to Michael Mann - who decided that three biopics in a row was one too many, and made 'Collateral' instead. You can certainly point to similarities between Hughes' bravado and the young De Niro in 'Mean Streets' and 'New York, New York', or Ray Liotta in 'GoodFellas'. He also shares some neuroses with the older De Niro in 'Casino'. But there's no real violence in this character, in part because the movie airbrushes the harm his recklessness inflicted on others, along with his anti-Semitism and reactionary, right-wing politics. A scene in which he berates Hepburn's liberal elite family for taking money for granted is a bit rich, coming from one of the most spendthrift playboys ever to be born with a silver spoon in his mouth. The film's breathless pace is also something of a drawback. Hughes packed so much in to these years, even when they're compressed, condensed and colour-coded as they are here (with a good deal of wit and intelligence, I should add), there's not much breathing room. As Hepburn remarks in the movie's best line, 'There's too much Howard Hughes in Howard Hughes'. 
It's really only in the last act, as the tycoon begins to lose his mental grip - he suffered from undiagnosed obsessive compulsive disorder - that Scorsese allows the audience to catch up. There are fine scenes here with Alan Alda as a corrupt US senator, and Alec Baldwin as Hughes' rival, Juan Trippe, the boss of Pan-Am airways and a shocking, but true sequence where Hughes cuts himself off from the world for the first time, subsisting on a diet of milk and candybars in a private screening room for weeks on end. (Mind you, I know some critics who are the same.) This section serves as intimation of the tragic fate which befell Howard Hughes, and shadows what is otherwise a bizarrely uplifting climax. This is Hughes as he would have wanted to be remembered. But it's not enough to give this dazzling entertainment real staying power. Beside Scorsese's devastatingly tough portrait of Jake LaMotta in 'Raging Bull', 'The Aviator' is decidedly fly-weight. Tom Charity 
More information about The Aviator » Critics' Reviews
Radio Times
If The Aviator lacks the punch of Martin Scorsese's earlier biopic Raging Bull, it's perhaps because Howard Hughes presents him with too much raw material. A millionaire at 18 (he inherited the Hughes Tool Company from his father), Hughes went on to become an aircraft designer and movie mogul, set air-speed records, date Hollywood's top stars and create Jane Russell's push-up bra in The Outlaw. Hughes's childhood is dismissed in a brief prologue that sets up his obsession with cleanliness, then it's straight on to the beginning of his Hollywood career. The film is uneven, seemingly unsure of whether its protagonist is hero or villain, but Leonardo DiCaprio brings an impressive intensity to the role of Hughes — even if he still looks too boyish for the role. Cate Blanchett is a treat as a rather Emma Thompson-like Katharine Hepburn, but Kate Beckinsale is hopelessly miscast as Ava Gardner.
Fascinating, witty and detailed account of a complex man that concentrates on his years of success and glamour, though it hints at the his future as a obsessive, unhinged recluse. The Times Scorsese's biopic is as successful, if not more, in capturing the spirit of an era as it is in capturing the essence of the man. Members' ReviewsReviews Voted Most HelpfulMost Recent Reviews |