Biopic or testimonial?

Rating: 7/10 (20 February 2005)

This Scorsese-DiCaprio epic is a visual and audible feast. All the media blitzing seems warranted from the perspective of bang for your movie bucks. The special effects are thrilling. The camera work is hypnotizing. The shots are suitably grand or movingly intimate. And, the viewer is guaranteed 170 minutes of semi-solid entertainment. I cringed at the initial sound of Cate's Kate, but I was won over very quickly. I winced at the first sight of Beckinsale's Gardner, but I was soon reassured by her delivery of Ava-speak, frank and earthy. Mr DiCaprio's representation of Hughes was less problematic, since the recluse Hughes left a relatively forgotten audio-visual legacy. Alec Baldwin and Alan Alda were really quite good. Alda's Senator Brewster rivals Charles Laughton's Senator Cooley in Preminger's "Advise and Consent" (1962).
But, is it biopic or testimonial? And, as either or both, is the film a well constructed and coherent piece of work? The exploration of Howard Hughes' eccentricities certainly is coherently and cogently done. This is no mean feat. The man lived a relatively long and very eventful life, despite crippling personality traits. The political material late in the film did seem more testimonial than biopic. I felt I was fairly warned by the earlier scene, in which Hughes scolds the rich socialists at the Hepburn table in Connecticut. In any case, I think it fair to summarize one of the movie's underlying prejudices as "Unrestrained capitalism is good." It is indeed a timely message. However, I wonder if this timely viewpoint will stand the test of time and art.