"A bad experience with a dog"

Rating: 6/10 (6 June 2012)

The biographical movie is these days more able than ever to be frank about all kinds of madness and sordidness. In fact it's more than that. It's practically a prerequisite of the modern biopic that you present your subject as some kind of flawed genius. The trouble is, no matter how interesting the individual, an interesting movie is not a guarantee.
The Aviator is directed by Martin Scorsese, whose love of antique cinema surely gave him some special interest in the project. However, I don't see what the idea was of making the early scenes mimic Howard Hughes's two-strip colour process. It doesn't have the authenticity to hark back to the real thing, no other lost classic techniques are resurrected to keep it company, and frankly it looks ugly. As usual Scorsese's showy, jumpy manner of filmmaking is a bit hit-and-miss. He's still great at capturing states of mind, albeit a bit heavy-handedly, but he is seriously short on "wow" moments these days.
The protagonist is portrayed by Scorcese's new favourite Leonardo DiCaprio. He's perfect as the young Hughes because he'll probably go on looking eighteen until he's fifty. Trouble is he still looks (and sounds) eighteen when he's playing the middle-aged Hughes. The acting however is first class, subtle yet forceful. The same unfortunately cannot be said of Cate Blanchett's terrible impersonation of Katherine Hepburn, which copies a few of Hepburn's speech patterns in a grotesque caricature. And she gets the accent wrong. No-one else really stands out as good or bad.
In spite of the general mediocrity of the production, Hughes's life as presented here does offer up some great moments. A nice little montage of clips from Hell's Angels which makes it look even better than it probably is in reality. The occasional humour in an incredibly rich man who thinks he can get anything to happen by simply buying the experts. Our ability to actually route for Hughes when he comes back blazing and cleans up at the hearing after everyone had written him off as a nutter. The eventual poignancy as his condition resurfaces. However it's The Aviator's failure to weave this into some kind of grand narrative that makes it seem so plain overall.