A cowardly pioneer

Rating: 7/10 (26 August 2006)

Howard Hughes was a tiny man in a gigantic world of Fascism, Hitlerism, and Stalinism. My friend Kim, in Salt Lake City, was dressed in his underwear, outside, by his mother, a Mormon. This was some kind of strange ritual, to me a Roman Catholic. It was a non-secret/secret. Adults have secrets. Mormonism is a big honking secret. His underwear and his mother dressing him in underwear were BIG secrets. It was weird. We Catholics in Salt Lake City had our own secrets. Open secrets in a Mormon world/state. I believe Howard Hughes may have grown up in a Mormon situation. Howard Hughes lived a full life and a crippled life which cannot be portrayed in film or text or any medium. Leonardo di Caprio did a great job portraying this sick person Hughes who had a fantastic life. His phobias were great secrets which needed a little open air to deflate their mythic power and thus be dis-armed. It was a sad thing that Hughes's phobias were not thrown asunder as his fantastic ideas were advanced. He deserved better. He deserved the love of Kate Hepburn, I suppose. She was a stellar gal. This is in sum a spectacular movie, which is as good as you could get considering this weird guy Hughes. This is a gigantic movie. Full of ideas. A spectacular gift from director Martin Scorcese.