A Brilliant Failure

Rating: 7/10 (1 July 2011)

Decades ago when I was at the Wolper Company in Los Angeles, my supervisor, David Seltzer, who wrote the Omen franchise, came into my office and put a book on my desk - a biography of Howard Hughes. "Could you write a treatment of this?" Dave asked. "Sure," I said. I skimmed the book and yawned. Why would anyone be interested in Howard Hughes, I asked myself. The same applies to The Aviator. Who cares? And that is the core of the problem with the film. For all its brilliance in so many ways, from casting to photography to music to design, The Aviator is not only state of the art, it achieves a threshold that sets a new standard for motion pictures. But ultimately the film fails because we simply do not care about Howard Hughes, and there are so many reasons why we don't care. Sure, he was a genius, but he was also a bonified nut case and because of that fact alone it is impossible to relate to him much less have any feeling or emotion for him.