Love the colors, Marty!

Rating: 3/10 (1 June 2005)

I suspect I am one of about 17 people who figured out that Martin Scorsese and cinematographer Robert Richardson were attempting to mimic the palette of two-strip Technicolor during the first half of this film. Big deal. After the ugly visionary debacle of Gangs of New York, our 'greatest living film director' seems to have been reduced to spending 100 million dollars to score points with the film geeks. The Aviator is digital eye candy; stunningly shot, beautifully costumed, lavishly decorated, intricately edited, and nutritionally valueless. The Motion Picture Academy got it dead right: awards for all the technical categories, and a complete shut out for everything else. The Best Supporting Actress award for Cate Blanchette is the exception that proves this rule: her performance as Katherine Hepburn is an over-the-top technical marvel quite lacking in any dramatic substance whatsoever.
It is incomprehensible to me that a film about one of our most fascinating American legends could be this dull. As many posters to this site have pointed out, The Aviator is factually dubious; nevertheless, couldn't Scorsese and screenwriter John Logan at least have used lies that are fun? Why not adapt Charles Highham's scandalously lurid biography? That would have been a film to see, a film about an amoral colossus, at once so public and so secretive, whose enormous appetites, implacable will, and resolute daring propelled him to the peak of power and influence. Then, of course, we could witness the inevitable fall, when those same qualities turn against their bearer, leaving him shriveled, quivering, and helpless in a Mexican hotel room.
Instead we get Arnie Grape with money, some airplanes, and a nice suit. DiCaprio's performance is not bad; in fact, it is often rather good - it is just the wrong performance in the wrong film. He never once convinces as Howard Hughes, although, later in the film, DiCaprio sometimes looks uncannily like a young Orson Welles, circa The Stranger.
I doubt the resemblance is coincidental. Because, in truth, this film is not about Howard Hughes at all. It is about Welles, and Von Stroheim, and Coppola, and, yes, Martin Scorsese - Hollywood outsider visionaries who took on the establishment suits and who, in turn, were destroyed by them, because they threatened the establishment's power and prestige. It is the same story that Coppola told in his infinitely better film Tucker, The Man and His Dream. It is a consoling story for a man like Scorsese, who hasn't made an indispensable film in close to 25 years, but one that has an air of desperation about it, as if Scorsese realizes that, in his case, it just won't do. After all, no one was giving Welles or Von Stroheim $50-100 million dollar budgets during their fall from grace.
Look Marty, everyone knows that no one, including DePalma, can set up and shoot an intricate, lengthy, single-take tracking shot like you can. Everyone knows that your encyclopedic knowledge of film history makes Quentin Tarantino look like a wheezing punk. Everyone knows that you can get remarkable once-in-a-lifetime performances from your actors. You have nothing left to prove on these scores. So cut the sh*t. Stop wasting money on all this bloated, empty crap. For God's sake, Welles, in F for Fake, which cost peanuts, showed more insight into Howard Hughes in ten minutes than The Aviator showed in three hours. Start emulating those Italian Neo Realists whom you understand so astutely. Take a few million out of the bank, grab a couple of digital cameras, head downtown, and make something vital. I, and a lot of other people, think you still have it in you. Your strengths are intimate, not epic. Take a chance. Go for it. Be a real Hollywood outsider. Wave of the future, Marty. Wave of the future. Wave of the future...