Ahead in the clouds...

Rating: 7/10 (13 February 2005)

When it comes to filmed biographies, I set a simple standard. For me the minimum expectation in seeing a film biography is that, in the end, I walk away with the feeling that I have met someone worth meeting. Just because the subject of the film is famous or important won't impress me; the film has to prove that that person should be important to me.
I mean, when I left the film MELVIN AND HOWARD, a slice-of-life comedy about Melvin Dumar whose brief encounter with celebrity gave him his 15 minutes of fame, I was exhilarated; the film introduced me to someone unique, someone I was glad I met, no matter how fleeting the meeting or fleeting his fame. On the other hand, when I walked out of RAGING BULL and GOODFELLAS, two wildly overpraised bios by Martin Scorsese, my honest reaction was "So what?" Jake LaMotta and Henry Hill were of no interest to me before those films and are of even less interest to me now. And nothing Scorsese did stylistically within those films made those characters in any way interesting. I think RAGING BULL and GOODFELLAS are lousy movies because those characters did not touch me in anyway.
Now here is Scorsese, the maker of those two films, directing a biopic about Howard Hughes, the Howard in MELVIN AND HOWARD. The film does have one thing in its favor immediately: Hughes was one fascinating individual, so it would seem almost impossible to make an uninteresting film about him. Though, one would have to overlook THE CARPETBAGGERS, the silly 1962 soap opera loosely based on Hughes' life; and to take into account that the subject of THE LAST TEMPTATION OF Christ was also an incredible individual, yet Scorsese managed to do a total hatched job on him.
THE AVIATOR suffers from the same problem as most biopics: too much story, too much man, too much legend and too little time. Who he was competes for screen time with what he did. Even as it pushes toward three hours, it barely touches upon the influence that the man had. A whole film could have been made just about his dabbling in movie making. But the film does a great job at targeting the highlights of his early life and using those moments to illustrate his advancing state of mental illness. And even then, the film seems incomplete as it ends his story long before the intensity of Hughes' mental illness took control of his life. Ironically, the film takes on too much of his life and yet doesn't cover enough of it.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about THE AVIATOR is that it a sympathetic story about a multimillionaire. Indeed the film's advertising sells it as a man-against-the-system success story, even though the battles he fights are largely designed to consolidate his power and increase his wealth. What Hughes does in the film seems neither more nor less ruthless, reckless and/or self-centered than any of his adversaries. He was, it would seem, born into wealth; lived the life of a spoiled playboy, noted for his numerous affairs; and excelled at being an aggressive businessman, not above hostile takeovers. Just the sort of character that Hollywood loves to hate. The film could have easily painted a very cruel and negative picture of Hughes, but, perhaps because of his mental illness -- or perhaps because, like Scorsese, Hughes was an obsessive filmmaker -- the story is at the very least respectful of the man and his accomplishments.
At first Leonard DiCaprio seems far too young to play Hughes, especially as the prevailing image of Hughes is either that of an older man in his prime or as an old man, stewing in the decay of his own mental illness and the cocoon of wealth. But DiCaprio does a remarkable job of showing us that Hughes had a youth, that he was an angry, aggressive young man of considerable ambition and a degree of genius. And DiCaprio takes Hughes past the stages of callow youth and into the physical and mental decline of a wounded warrior. One hopes that DiCaprio will revisit the character in a decade or two to explore the second half of the millionaire's eccentric life. There is more to be told and DiCaprio seems to have the talent to see this man's life through. DiCaprio's efforts are only overshadowed by Cate Blanchett's scene-stealing turn as a strong-willed and tough-minded Katharine Hepburn.
If I have any real problem with THE AVIATOR it is that it does seem to adhere to the standard biopic blueprint of this-happened-that-happened. The story might have been better approached in the style of CITIZEN KANE, juggling the past with the present, telling the story from various viewpoints. After all, Hughes was a Kane-like figure: powerful, ruthless, kind, self-important and contradictory. KANE's message was that you can't really get to know a man; THE AVIATOR seems to think it knows its subject a little too well. But as is, the film is a solid and entertaining piece of stylish and colorful film-making. It takes off and stays aloft until the end.