High-Flying, Most of the Time

Rating: 8/10 (14 April 2005)

In "The Aviator," Scorcese has nailed the period--20s to 40s--flawlessly. As for the liberties he took with actual history, well, this be the movies, right? As such, his depiction, swaggering and swanky, like the celebrities populating the time period, was picture perfect.
DiCaprio, as Howard Hughes, gave us what we wanted, a bigger than life, more paranoid than most, character, as full of himself as he was, deep inside, wary of others. Cate Blanchett, as Kate Hepburn in her successful years, nearly stole the show, playing Kate as a tomboyish, extremely confident mistress, well aware of her stardom and not about to take crap from anyone, inclusive of Hughes, whom she dropped like the proverbial three foot putt when his idiosyncrasies begin to surface. Whenever Blanchett was on screen, one was drawn to her, DiCaprio's Hughes waning in her presence.
Scorcese set the pace of the movie on par with an airplane taking off, never letting up on the throttle. In one amazing sequence he showed Hughes crash-landing one of his planes during a test flight, giving us a variety of points of view, inclusive of that of Beverly Hills homeowners watching the plane's wings cut through their homes like a knife blade through tissue paper.
Having the mystical yet infamous Hughes as a story source provided Scorcese with more than enough fodder, and credit goes to the director for not presenting a four-hour epic. In addition, the deftly-crafted manner in which he incorporated the well-documented idiosyncrasies that ultimately led Hughes into total self-imposed isolation allowed DiCaprio the room to play the character both enigmatic and sad.
Much to Scorcese's credit, he left this viewer wondering, as I did when Hughes was the living legend, how a guy with that much moxie and drive and courage could fall prey to paranoid obsessions that turned him into a recluse?
The film reminded me of "Tucker: The Man and his Dream," which starred Jeff Bridges in the lead role. Both films present their protagonists as near supermen, with each ultimately cut down to size by opposing forces, both external and internal. Both films are enjoyable quasi-documentaries, and I recommend this double-bill to one and all.