Intriguing

Rating: 7/10 (1 February 2005)

Who was Howard Hughes? Howard Hughes was Captain Queeg, both the Queeg who wound up mumbling while juggling ball bearings under cross-examination in court and the Queeg rightly praised for helping defend the country behind the scenes before World War II ever started.
Howard Hughes was Elvis, lighting up the world and then slipping off his drug-addicted throne in the night.
Howard Hughes was Nikola Tesla, genius extraordinaire who wound up a lunatic feeding the pigeons on the steps of the NY Public Library.
Yes, Howard Hughes was a flawed genius. Who isn't flawed? I'd like to meet that person. Hughes' flaws were just bigger than some and ultimately consumed him, but he lived a heck of a life.
As to this film, it also is flawed because it doesn't answer the question of who Hughes was, except to portray Hughes as cool but really, really weird. There is no rhyme or reason given for anything. Things are done because Howard Hughes wants them done. Period. An overused attempt at a "Rosebud" gimmick attempts to explain everything, but to me at least, explains nothing.
A glaring problem to me is that there is an almost violent obsession in this film with Mr. Hughes' obsessive-compulsive disorder even though that didn't really take on its grotesque dimensions until late in his life. This film wants to paint him as Rainman at the very moment of his last and greatest triumph, the flight of the Spruce Goose. Yes, he died with long fingernails and so forth and so on. But that was almost 30 years later! And even then, he still, in his final years, was able to conduct a lucid telephone interview with reporters to discredit the famed unauthorized "authorized" biography. Hughes was still active in Hollywood until the late 1950s. I think that this film's attempt to paint Hughes as a freak during a time when he wasn't one yet - he was just a lovable eccentric throughout his public life - is disappointing.
The best parts of the film show Howard Hughes in action, making instant decisions and pulling the aviation industry ahead with his teeth. The worst parts are the talky and often clunky melodramatic interludes, with inexplicable scenes of girlfriends ramming their cars into his and so forth. The most striking scene is Hughes pulling himself together to testify before the Senate and turning the inquisition back on the inquisitor. The aviation scenes, collectively, make the film, though.
The person I saw this with asked an excellent question as we left. "Wasn't Hughes ever married?" That you can sit through a three-hour film on a man and not even get a hint at an answer to that basic question - in fact, you get all sorts of hints at the wrong answer to that question - is inexplicable.
This film has some of the same flaws as "Gangs of New York." That film had some excellent scenes, then fell apart when it tried to become a documentary. This film doesn't quite fall apart, but it loses its focus when it forces in unnecessary allusions to Hughes' later problems. There is a lot of great stuff, and a lot of sloppiness to this film. I think that Scorcese is a great film-maker who needs a disciplined editor.
I liked "The Aviator." I consider it one of the best of 2004 for a number of reasons, not least because overall it really is favorable to its subject and continues the justified rehabilitation of Howard Hughes that began with "The Rocketeer." Leo DiCaprio gives a fabulous performance. But the script is too indulgent, the editing too porous, the effects too showy. Why? To what end? Those are the questions that need to be answered about Mr. Hughes, and they aren't even asked in this film.