The Force of Imagination

Rating: 8/10 (11 May 2006)

"The Aviator" is a work of art, not a vain attempt to create a realistic biography on film. Scorsese paints his scenes with oblique brush strokes and his icons take their forms.
As the film opens, the audience is shown the young Howard Hughes being washed, tested and warned by his mother. They are sequestered in a large, quiet, clean parlour room. A fear of outside contamination is being inculcated into his psyche. John Logan, the film's scriptwriter, seems to be saying that Howard's formative years were spent in very protective custody. The safety of home, of being inside with one's parents, especially with one's mother. The oblique reference here is to "Citizen Kane" and his sheltered childhood. 'Rosebud' becomes 'Quarantine. Q-u-a-r-a-n-t-i-n-e. Quarantine', a semi-mystic recurrence.
You are conscious that you are watching film from the beginning to end of "The Aviator". Cinema itself becomes a kind of religious artifact for Scorsese as his choice, to use the more primitive colour technology of the 30s (film stock registering reds and blues, but not greens) to shoot the first half of the movie, demonstrates. His selection of quality period music is impeccable and exciting in itself. Hence, authenticity in "The Aviator" is reserved for art. Approximation will do for life. The realities of Hughes', Hepburn's, Domergue's and Gardener's lives, amongst others portrayed in the film, take a back seat to Scorsese's artistic license. And this is not really such a bad thing, although that observation occasionally goes unappreciated because of the proclivity of certain people go to the movies to vicariously experience the lives of real people. They feel cheated when that experience is denied, even when it is artistically, that is, consciously short circuited.
Thus, it is difficult for many audience members to get their heads around the fact that Leonardo DiCaprio is Howard Hughes. He's not supposed to be the real Hughes. He is an icon representing Hughes. Sure, that happens in other movies too. But, in this one, it is different. You can never suspend your disbelief as in the way you would in say, Scorsese's "Raging Bull". Neither can you suspend your disbelief that Cate Blanchett IS Katherine Hepburn. Even Cate's mastering of the Hepburn's signature accent is not on, in terms of getting you to believe that she is anybody but Cate Blanchett. Still, one does very much appreciate the acting abilities of everyone in this film, including Kate Beckinsale, but nobody who has actually seen Ava Gardener in movies like "Night of the Iguana" can find Beckinsale other than a finely sculpted representation of the voluptuous Ms. Gardener. And as for Alan 'the MASH' Alda, playing the corrupt, McCarthy era Senator Ralph Owen Brewster, please, it's just not possible. Still, they're all excellent when taken in the context of the totality which is "The Aviator". The actors remain engaging, even as the film itself moves with its own kind of surrealist animus.
As George Orwell accurately observed, "All art is propaganda, but not all propaganda is art." Fortunately, "The Aviator" is both. Its art can be found in its cinematographic beauty, the quality of the performances and direction and in its meaning. Hughes was an archetype of the entrepreneurial spirit of Christmases past; a time when one man could use his accumulated wealth to achieve the goals his imagination generated. In his own filmic way, Scorsese has replayed the American dream which swirls in so many minds today; the dream of capitalism and freedom; the dream of near, absolute power to change the world. Hughes had all of this, of course. At one paranoid point in the film, Hughes asks one of his confidants, "Who is that man? Does he work for me?" To which, one of his executive hirelings replies, "Why Mr. Hughes, everyone works for you."
The Hughes and Hepburn of "The Aviator" represent those dreamy icons. They are at their peak in the depths of the Great Depression. At a time when Woody Guthrie would be walking out on a well paid gig at the Coconut Grove to hop a freight and preserve his sense of integrity, Hughes would be thinking of buying the Grove as he obsessively planned his next Hollywood blockbuster. Meanwhile, the glam-dame Hepburn would be seeking solace in Howard's courage to challenge the petty-minded money changers of the sexist Hollywood Establishment. To be sure, Hughes backed up his daring with financial power and a proved ability to beat the odds while making money at creatively inspired projects. Hughes' qualities were not lost on the astute Hepburn. In "The Aviator", they enjoy a mutual affection which was driven by more than money. In "The Aviator", it's pure audacity which makes them "cling" together like two glasses of Veuve Clicquot while flying Howard's plane around the skies of Los Angeles.
This is a great artistic opus, from the consciously chosen uses of form: the primitive two-colour process during the first half of "The Aviator", to the content embedded in philosophical-political-psychological messages running through the whole of its 170 minute run-time. Martin Scorsese is the Orson Wells of our time.
"Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs, self-acting mules etc. These are products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of the human will over nature, or of human participation in nature. They are organs of the human brain, created by the human hand; the power of knowledge, objectified. The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of production, and to what degree, hence, the conditions of the process of social life itself have come under the control of the general intellect and been transformed in accordance with it. To what degree the powers of social production have been produced, not only in the form of knowledge, but also as immediate organs of social practice, of the real life process." Karl Marx (1857) The GRUNDRISSE, chapter 14