Scorsese and DiCaprio back on track

Rating: 9/10 (19 December 2004)

'And the winner of this year's Academy Award for Best Director is.Martin Scorsese'
Why not? After all, he has been nominated five times before. Adored by critics and hailed as one of this generations finest film helmers, Marty has yet to walk to the podium to accept his due.
Ben Affleck has one. Eminem has one. So why not in the same year that saw Phil Mickelson finally whip his own demons and walk away with a Master's Championship, and the Boston Red Sox overcome the Curse of the Bambino, should Martin Scorsese not be able to put a lifetime of film-making into an honor that has him take home the coveted golden statuette.
Martin's 2004 crack at the can comes courtesy of The Aviator, a film that chronicles the life of movie director and multi-millionaire aviator, Howard Hughes. For any of us that have seen an E! True Hollywood Story or A&E Biography on the eccentric Mr. Hughes, they would most remember his final years. He became a paranoid recluse that bordered on the insane.
But Scorsese only dabbles in Hughes final years and the slow deterioration of this playboy's exile. Instead, he shows what a shrewd businessman and compulsive obsessive aviator Hughes was in his younger years and how he single handedly, due to either his genius or incredible stubbornness, didn't allow Pan Am to buy his Trans World Airlines to create a one-airline option for the American public.
Playing the role as the anomalous Howard Hughes is Leonardo DiCarpio in his second collaboration with Scorsese in as many years (Gangs of New York). I have written for almost five years now how I have not understood the DiCarpio fascination. He was just OK in good films  Titanic, Catch Me If You Can  but gawd-awful in movies that he could have elevated  The Beach, The Man in The Iron Mask. Before The Aviator was even viewed for critics, DiCaprio was garnishing nominations as Best Actor and his salary intake based on one monster making film and countless teen magazines was just mind-blowing to me. Until now.
As Howard, Leo does his best work to date and any non-nomination by the Academy would be robbery. This will be the role that defines DiCaprio. A role where he plays both a man with a vision and a child that locks himself in a room in self quarantine. As a naked Hughes in his red screening room, he drinks copious amounts of milk, lines up his bottles of urine and fends off an aggressive takeover bid by Pan Am's Juan Trippe (Alec Baldwin). It is a scene upon which the succeeding chapters strongly rely and in the hands of a less talented actor, could have turned the movie into parody. But DiCaprio turns it into gold and although we are not talking about Tom Hanks type consistency yet, we definitely have seen a maturity that leads to as much more promise than say Gangs of New York did just one year ago.
Clocking in at an unnecessary 169 minutes, the movie's first quarter focuses on the making of Hughes' film Hell's Angels from 1927 to 1930. The film was a visually stunning epic, which before production wrapped, buried three stunt men, was shot twice to incorporate the new innovation of sound in motion pictures and came in at a cost of almost $4 million. Sure that type of money might not even pay for Bruce Willis' baggage handler in today's economics, but back in 1930, it was almost 4 times the cost of the average big screen production. This lavish spending on a film that that would be almost impossible to recuperate, brings Noah Dietrich (always reliable John C. Reilly) into Hughes life as his financial voice of reason and head of Hughes' inherited tools manufacturing business. Together, these two would meet on screen throughout the years as Hughes would always be looking for money to fulfill his dreams while looking to Dietrich to find the money.
After the opening of Hell's Angels, the movie begins to take a turn and follow the two loves of Hughes' life  aviation and women. In his aviation career, Hughes was a perfectionist that garnished grants from the government during wartime to build an airplane to better provide troops and equipment overseas. The plane, nicknamed the 'Spruce Goose' was completed after the war ended and was never used for its wartime intention. And as his empire grew, Hughes also started Trans World Airlines and began the quest of traveling to Europe and beyond. This would consume Hughes in his later years as conspirators in both rival airlines and the government tried desperately to dissipate his dreams.
When it came to women, Hughes was labeled 'The World's Greatest Womanizer' back in the 1950's, but it was his love for Katherine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett) that the film reveals most prominently. They had a tumultuous relationship where fame and pressure would ultimately be their demise. But that didn't stop Hughes from putting a lovely woman on his arm each time he went out on the town. Hughes was attached to Ava Gardner and Jean Harlow and various times during his adult life and was the Scott Baio of their times.
The last few chapters of the film deal with Hughes battle with government and his own internal demons as he edges into a world of insanity. This was an important footnote in the life of this public celebrity, but Scorsese probably draws it out 20 minutes more than is necessary.
When the film is over, it is hard not to be overwhelmed with the contributions Hughes made to the future in both film-making and aviation. Without his battles with the government airlines like Southwest and Continental might never have ran a tarmac and he pushed the envelope with such violent or sexual in nature films as Scarface (1932) and The Outlaw (1941) that caused the MPAA to review its processes.
The Aviator will lead the nominations parade throughout 2005. Scorsese, DiCaprio and Best Picture are all strong possibilities and rightfully so. The Aviator was a step back in the right direction for both director and lead actor and was one of the top 10 of 2005.
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