flawed but compelling look at a visionary

Rating: 8/10 (24 August 2005)

It ain't always easy being a visionary and an innovative genius - just ask Howard Hughes, the renowned millionaire, who had three main ambitions in life: to build the fastest airplanes, to make the biggest movies, and to become the richest man in the world. That he achieved those lofty goals at a very great personal cost to himself is what makes his story the stuff of legend. For Hughes also suffered from the demon of mental illness, which manifested itself in chronic obsessive/compulsive behavior, a neurotic fear of germs, and acute paranoia. Martin Scorsese captures all facets of this larger-than-life figure in "The Aviator," a high-flying epic that does justice to a man who became a national icon and the embodiment of the American dream despite his internal weaknesses - and whose legend lives on today.
John Logan's script spends virtually no time on Hughes' youth except for a brief prologue which shows Howard's hypochondriac mother planting those seeds of fear in his tender psyche that would haunt him the rest of his life. The story proper begins with Hughes' efforts to produce what would turn out to be the most expensive film ever made up to that time, the war epic "Hell's Angels," a non-studio work that allowed Hughes to combine his twin loves of movie-making and aviation. If nothing else, Hughes thought BIG, and his capriciousness and profligacy, as reflected in the mounting budget of the film he was making, also spilled over into the realm of aviation, as he began looking for ways to create ever more aerodynamic airplanes at greater and greater cost. His obsession with size culminated in the creation of the ill-fated Spruce Goose, the largest airplane ever made - and one whose airborne career lasted exactly one flight.
Logan and Scorcese also focus on the personal side of Hughes' life, concentrating specifically on his tumultuous affairs with Katharine Hepburn (brilliantly played by Cate Blanchett) and Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale). His relationship with Hepburn is a particularly telling one because they seem to understand one another so well - so well, in fact, that they are unable to make a permanent go of things and wind up going their separate ways.
As director, Scorcese brings his usual flair and visual inventiveness to the film, soaring highest - as is appropriate, perhaps - in the aviation sequences. The first hour, in particular, moves at a breathless clip, as he weaves the various strands of his epic - yet, at the same time, intimate - story into a cohesive whole. If the truth be told, at 170 minutes, the movies does run a little too long and it sags a bit in its middle section. However, as Hughes begins to unravel psychologically - at one point locking himself in a screening room barely clinging to what little remains of his sanity - the movie becomes a sad but fascinating study of a man in the throes of a nervous breakdown. The scene in which Hepburn converses with Hughes through a locked door, pleading with him to let her come in and help him, is heartbreaking in its poignancy.
As Hughes, Leonardo Di Caprio carries the weight of the film on his frail shoulders, and he does a superb job, hitting new dramatic heights in the scenes in which he both falls to pieces psychologically and rises confidently to the challenge of clearing his good name in a senate hearing. Alan Alda is also terrific as the senator from Maine determined to get Hughes to sell TWA to Pan Am in order to achieve a monopoly on international flight carriers in the future.
The first half of the 20th Century provided fertile soil for individuals like Hughes to grow and flourish, men with the brains to see what the future offered and the guts to reach out and go for it. The film captures the era beautifully through the art deco architecture, the dazzling sets and costumes, and a nostalgia-evoking soundtrack overflowing with familiar period standards.
What Scorcese undoubtedly understands is that Hughes continues to cast a spell over the general public not because of what he accomplished as a moviemaker, an inventor, an entrepreneur, but because he did all those things battling demons that made him both inexplicably strange and, at the same time, more recognizable as a human being with weaknesses very much like ourselves. It is this paradox that creates the kind of mystery a figure needs if he is to remain a source of fascination long after his death. In honor of that spirit, "The Aviator" doesn't unravel the enigma of Howard Hughes; it deepens it. And that is as it should be.