Well executed, but poorly told

Rating: 7/10 (3 January 2005)

Unlike Oliver Stone and Taylor Hackford, the directors, respectively, of "Alexander" and "Ray," Martin Scorcese didn't have the convenience of using a household name on which to base his own epic biopic. Concluding 2004's unusual run of biographies on the screen is Leo DiCaprio's portrayal of Howard Hughes, an airline magnate and occasional Hollywood director.
At the start of "The Aviator," DiCaprio's Hughes is something of a stock character. The single-minded, failure-free nature of the young Hughes is something movie-goers have been seeing since Citizen Kane (1941), but the type is so endearing that it's hard not to fall in love with the guy. Then Cate Blanchett enters in a startlingly fun portrayal of Katherine Hepburn, and the movie is off. It's inevitable enough, without knowing beforehand Hughes' personal history, that the two will fall in love, and it's even more obvious that Hughes will bungle it. When Katherine does move out, though, she takes not just her baggage and Hughes' heart, but the life of the film as well.
It's hard to tell if this departure is the cause for the chaos that ensues - business failure, unscrupulous political pressure, and delirium intensify for Hughes as the movie goes on. Once Blanchett's bounciness leaves, the film gets darker and more obsessive by the minute, something that is executed with absolute technical precision. Scorcese doesn't give in, as Hackford did in "Ray," to literal hallucinations; reality just gets sharper - louder, brighter, closer up.
Regardless, it doesn't really add up by the end. The difficulty of the biopic is the filmmaker's obligation to the truth, which is something that never exists in favorable narrative patterns. Scorcese and screenwriter John Logan carefully choose what parts of Hughes' life are screen worthy, and do their best to make art out of it. They're only successful on occasion; the picture, while never lacking conviction, lacks form. There isn't really anything they can do about it, and one gets the impression that Scorcese was constantly convincing himself that climaxes existed in places where they never did. His vision for the epic is strong, but the problem is that it doesn't conform to the real thing. It's hard to imagine what Hughes might have thought of his film - particularly since one leaves the theater without a genuine impression of who he was.