The best American film since Citizen Kane

Rating: 10/10 (29 January 2005)

A rare uniformity of talent and intelligence was brought to this project. John Logan's script is based on primary source research and reveals Hughes' character in a sequence of carefully deployed scenes that embody this in the context of the national hysteria (mania), which characterized the US from the end of of the 14-18 war through WW11. His seeming debilitating neuroses find a perfect psychiatric logic in that he sees the outer world as something which may come between him and his dream..a very rational view. The timing of his psychic crises always came as his dreams were most in peril and served the purpose of isolating him, protecting him from negative forces. His bacteriaphobia was symbolic and useful.
Leonardo Dicaprio (whose project this originally was) is astounding in his vision of Hughes and his realization of it. Again, Logan has provided the right words in the right place to carry this through. Cate Blanchett's Hepburn further confirms this actress's brilliance. She knows that an accent, a pattern of speech, are part and parcel of character and she portrayed this with an intelligent vibrancy seldom seen on the screen today. The supporting cast was uniformly excellent.
Scorsese had now made a great American film, his subject a very difficult one, but he shows the greatness of Howard Hughes, his flaws and debilities intertwined with his astounding abilities and imaginatively demonstrates them as inseparable and dynamically necessary.
The cinematography is the capstone of this achievement, just as it was in Welles' Citizen Kane. Combined with the editing, this is a visual as well as a textual masterpiece.