I hope these blueprints are not the way of the future

Rating: 7/10 (14 July 2005)

I don't think I'll ever quite understand mainstream tastes. This won five Oscars (including for Cate Blanchett's performance??) and was nominated for six others, including directing, best motion picture of the year, screenplay written directly for the screen and Alan Alda's performance?? That strikes me as bizarre to say the least, although perhaps not as bizarre as the fact that the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films nominated this for "Best Action/Adventure/Thriller Film", or the fact that so many other awards organizations followed suit.
It's not that I hated The Aviator--I do think it's worth at least one view, especially if Howard Hughes fascinates you. But although I agree that there is some decent (but not Oscar-worthy) cinematography and production design in the film, and Leonardo DiCaprio did a good job despite other factors, I had serious problems with the directing, the screenplay and most of the performances (which I partially blamed on the directing). Yes, I gave the film a seven, but a low seven, and from me, that means this was almost a "D". Or in other words, I'd almost not give director Martin Scorsese credit for this if he turned it in for a university course.
The Aviator is a biopic about "eccentric" millionaire businessman and filmmaker Howard Hughes (played here by DiCaprio). He also had something of a fetish for aviation, as you could guess from the title of the film. Scorsese and screenwriter John Logan focus on 20 or 30 years of Hughes' life, beginning in the late 1920s, when he was making Hell's Angels (1930), and ending just after the infamous U.S. Senate hearings and the public demonstration of behemoth wooden plane known as the "Spruce Goose". It focuses on his dueling obsessions in the film and aviation industries, a couple of his relationshipsprimarily Katherine Hepburn and Ava Gardner, and his increasingly odd "quirks".
Since a lot of praise is routinely heaped on The Aviator, I want to mainly focus on the flaws that I believe are present. First off, for the material presented in the film, it is far too long, clocking in at just under three hours. Much of it drags, so the first hour and a half feels more like three. Scorsese has actually had a length problem for some time now--it also seriously marred Casino (1995). He needs to hire an editor who will not kowtow to him. The majority of The Aviator consists of people standing around and talking, and they're usually talking about business. That gives it all the excitement of a 9:00 a.m. employee meeting at a company you don't really enjoy working for. Of course, there's more to the film than that--mainly the romances and the quirk exhibition--but the business meeting mode takes up an unusual amount of screen time. The only time the film becomes really engaging is during a disastrous flight that ends in Beverly Hills. Yes, that's an "action" scene, but no, I do not only like action films. Just take a look at my other reviews and ratings.
However, a more serious problem than the length is the combination of direction and performances. The dialogue, in particular, began to grate on my nerves. I'm not sure that the dialogue as written is bad in itself, but Scorsese directs his cast to deliver their lines with bizarre affectations (and I don't just mean characters like Hepburn who did really talk unusually), and frequently talk on top of one another (and I don't just mean the dinner scene at the Hepburn home). Bizarre affectations can work for me in many circumstances. But here, I do not get the impression that Scorsese was trying to make The Aviator surreal (despite the beautiful blue grass on the golf course), Lynchian or experimental overall. The dialogue-delivery and the performances in general tend to play with an aura of "Hey, we're making a big Hollywood film now", or, the whole affair seems affected, pretentious, and "fake". Perhaps Scorsese was shooting for awards here. Maybe he gets mainstream tastes. To my sensibilities, it seems that Scorsese and Logan were writing and directing to pander to what a particular type of person wants to hear, rather than writing and directing towards what they think is right/believe in artistically.
So I found most of the performances more bothersome than pleasurable, including Alan Alda and Alec Baldwin, both of whom I normally enjoy. Cate Blanchett was particularly grating to me. I've liked her in a couple films, but she's batting closer to .133 for me so far. DiCaprio gave the sole performance--though not Oscar-worthy--that sometimes worked for me. Of course, that's important, since he's the focus; otherwise, The Aviator could have received nowhere near a 7.
There are also serious problems with the "argument" Scorsese and Logan seem to be making about Hughes. They seem to place some of the blame for his quirks on his mother, but this is very poorly developed. More seriously, there is a very odd absence of showing why Hughes was as successful as he was--and he was successful, and not just due to an inheritance. According to this film, Hughes was primarily a man who made a number of insane and increasingly financially disastrous decisions while others tried to tolerate him. Even odder, there's a sense of Hughes just "going along for the ride". We're not really shown any successful business dealings, relationships, or positive actions. Even considering the film purely as fiction, the character doesn't work for what's supposedly happening "around" the character.
Sure, Hughes' quirks are fun to explore, and this and other aspects do occasionally make the film engrossing--occasionally, you forget to glance at the clock. But there are far more serious problems than assets here, and The Aviator is definitely not worth the inflated accolades it has received.