Aviator Wins Bafta and Tipped For Oscar? - Everybody Panic!

Rating: 3/10 (13 February 2005)

I'm all for technical excellence in my movies, but no amount of "consumate professionalism" can redeem this dull, dull fare. Moreover, the fact that it won the coveted BAFTA fills this writer with dismay. It's one thing blaming the praise already heaped upon this dry and soulless piece of movie-making upon the stupidities of "Hollywood" (cf. last year's win for the essentially ephemeral LOTR 3 and that vacuous gaudy bauble Chicago in 2003), but when the UK homeland industry movers and shakers give it the Big Gong, it really is time to panic.
I saw the movie last night merely to see the Dicaprio and Blanchett performances and to check out the whole thing in the light of impending awards and got less than I expected. To start with, Howard Hughes was off my radar aside from "Howard Hughes smiling at the majorettes smoking Winston cigarettes" line from Genesis' The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (1974), and one does like to keep abreast of history. But considering the fellow had such an interesting life it was some sort of "triumph" of Scorsese and whoever turned in the script to present us with effortlessly one of the most boring movies I have ever paid cash to see. Though illuminated by Blanchett (and cheered enormously to see mon hero de musique, Rufus Wainwright in the early moments), the thing collapses in the last hour or so pretty much completely as a piece of drama. The lack of care in terms of narrative presentation was truly shocking, I thought. In short, what drama? Where dramatic tension? This by the end was a film dying on its arse. And then one has to contemplate its triumph over infinitely better films last night: Vera Drake is inferior to The Aviator in British judgement? I can only imagine that many of the voters were pulling for Raging Bull and Goodfellas and hadn't even seen the film they were nominally voting for: in effect, this has to have been a vote for Scorsese.
What an utter travesty.
Craig Thomas