A fascinating movie about a fascinating man

Rating: 8/10 (11 July 2005)

The story of Howard Hughes' life is an amazing one. Where would one even begin trying to tell this tale? Martin Scorsese smartly focuses on Hughes as a young man. It was a time in which Hughes had the world at his fingertips only to let it all slip away in a terrible descent into madness. In The Aviator we see Hughes at his most triumphant but we also see him lose it all as his mind betrays him. Capturing all of this in a terrific performance is Leonardo DiCaprio. DiCaprio is brilliant in portraying the young swashbuckling pilot, mogul and ladies' man Hughes was. He also manages to convince in showing Hughes as the beaten shell of a man he would become. It's almost as if DiCaprio had to portray two entirely different characters and he does a magnificent job of it.
While this is clearly DiCaprio's (and by extension Hughes') movie, there are fine performances by a host of other stars portraying many of the key figures in Hughes' life. Most notable is Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn, the true love of Hughes' life. It has been said that Hepburn herself was a bit of a caricature, certainly not someone who would be easy to portray, but Blanchett does it brilliantly. She captures the mannerisms, voice, style and heart of Hepburn. It would have been easy to hold something back in this performance for fear of coming off, well, a bit odd. But perhaps Hepburn really was a bit odd and Blanchett really went for it and nailed it. In a bit part as Jean Harlow, Gwen Stefani is really not required to do much more than look pretty, a task she is certainly capable of. While by no means bad, Kate Beckinsale's turn as Ava Gardner is nowhere near as good as Blanchett's. We never really get to know her and the movie suffers for that. And while Beckinsale certainly looks glamorous enough, it seems she is just imitating Ava Gardner whereas by contrast Blanchett truly is Katharine Hepburn.
On the male side of the ledger John C. Reilly, Alec Baldwin and Alan Alda all do fine work. Reilly plays Noah Deitrich, Hughes' right-hand man who must concern himself with the money because Hughes can't be bothered with such things. His ideas are much too big to be limited by money. Baldwin plays Juan Trippe, who runs Pan Am and in doing so finds his company's position threatened by Hughes' TWA. What's a businessman to do when threatened? Why, take advantage of his relationship with a corrupt politician of course. Alda fills that role and the back and forth between Alda's slimy senator and a defiant DiCaprio is among the film's highlights. As usual, Scorsese has gotten the best out of his cast.
Capturing the essence of a man whose life had so many tremendous peaks and valleys is quite difficult. Add in a potentially crippling mental illness and the challenge gets ratcheted up another notch. Very few directors could have pulled this off but Scorsese succeeds. We go along for a fascinating ride, reveling in Hughes' triumphs and agonizing right along with him in his darkest hours. It is a triumph for Scorsese but perhaps even more so for DiCaprio who brilliantly captures both the genius and the madness of Howard Hughes. Perhaps the film could have been a little more concise but with everything Hughes did in his life it's easy to imagine the film could have actually ended up being much longer. It would be impossible to tell the whole story of Howard Hughes. The story Scorsese and DiCaprio give us is a fascinating and eminently worthwhile one.