Larger than life

Rating: 9/10 (21 March 2005)

In "Taxi Driver," we saw how Travis Bickle told his partner how he would like to do something really "big." In his fight for the great deed, he cannot escape from an oppressive environment that forbids him to anything except the minimal to survive, and in that environment, the only "big" action within his reach is crime. "The Aviator," the Howard Hughes's story, is the story of some Travis Bickle with a couple billions more. That which in "Taxi Driver" was a constant anticipation climate, highlighted by the music from the same composer of "Psycho," constantly moving in a labyrinth from which Bickle tries over and over to escape from, in "The Aviator" is a life energy explosion. It's the constant "do" in contrast with the constant anticipation, of the "big deed," the most spectacular movie, the fastest plane, the travel around the world. It's a purely personal obsession, like Bickle's, which ends in madness. Inside the work, the creator remains totally alone because of its magnitude, in the middle of an ocean or desert whose borders cannot be seen being "inside." Although both Bickle (who gets the admiration of the woman who rejected him, and is called a hero) and Hughes (who gets his Hercules to fly and his air company to win his fight against Juan Trippe's monopoly) succeed before society, their success is out of reach for them. Their work has become something larger than their own lives. The creator has put himself into his creation and there's nothing left. It's up to the others to harvest (or not) what's been done.