The Aviator

Rating: Null/10 (6 November 2005)

Howard Hughes' life was like a dark fairy tale, one in which the hero woos all the princesses and becomes a hero to the people, but at a terrible personal price. Chiefly remembered by most people as the loony billionaire recluse of the 70s who shuffled around his penthouse hotel suite with his feet in tissue boxes, he was, of course, a genius. And, like many geniuses, he balanced precariously on that line that divides genius and madness for much of his life before toppling irrevocably over in a fashion as spectacular as the air crash that left him with nearly 80% burns.
With their opening scene, a strangely eroticised 'flashback' of Hughes as a boy being bathed by his mother and warned about cholera and typhus and q-u-a-r-a-n-t-i-n-e, Scorsese and scriptwriter John Logan seem to place the blame for Hughes' subsequent phobias and obsessive-compulsive disorder squarely on the shoulders of his mother. This may be true, but a solitary scene before moving on to the filming of Hell's Angels does little to convince or inform, or provide credible background for Hughes' subsequent mental problems.
Apart from this one scene, the film focuses on an approximately twenty-year period from 1927 to the Brewster Senate hearings and Hughes' piloting of the Spruce Goose after WWII. Hughes' love life, his engineering and business genius, and his increasing phobia over germs are given pretty much equal screen time, and the film does a reasonable job of slowly focusing more on the phobias as they begin to take over his life. Strangely enough, you'd think this aspect of his life would make up the more interesting part of the film, but it's when Hughes is shown at his most damaged that the film begins to drag. The imagery at this point is clumsy and uninspired and the film threatens to veer as badly out of control as Hughes did. Perhaps that was Scorsese's intention, but you're left with the impression of having been given a peep at a freak show rather than an examination of a man's breakdown.
Leonardo Di Caprio continues to surprise with his success at tackling difficult roles for which he would seem to be unsuitable. He gives an entirely believable and sympathetic performance here, capturing both the energy of the man and the mental and emotional insecurities he suffered, while managing to avoid the pitfalls that are inherent to such a part. The supporting cast also deliver uniformly excellent performances. Cate Blanchett, while not really resembling Katharine Hepburn, manages to capture her tone and inflections and mannerisms, while Kate Beckinsale is passable despite never really capturing the essence of Ava Gardner in the same way that Blanchett does with Hepburn.
This being a Scorsese film, it is, of course, technically brilliant. His decision to play with colour on some scenes is perhaps a little misguided, but he does tone down his often kinetic style, which would have been wholly inappropriate for a story like this. There are some great aerial shots and an incredible air crash, but the highlight for me was the barnstorming Brewster Senate Committee Hearings in which the malicious senator, excellently portrayed here by Alan Alda, is torn to shreds by a briefly recuperated Hughes.
While this film isn't flawless, it's doubtful that we will see a better biopic about Howard Hughes. It's just a shame that so many of the CGI effects are so blatantly shoddy.