If Martin Scorsese was looking for a dynamic, eerie, and intriguing film premise, he has certainly found one. Few combinations could be more fascinating, or explosive, than the concoction of vintage Hollywood culture and ripping psychosis driving his new picture, Howard Hughes' biopic, The Aviator. Of this year's biographies, this is the most ambitious, a second experiment in the visual fluency and epic scope that defined Gangs of New York. Plane explosions, cameos, legal battles and corrupt politics--it's all there. And yet, there's a catch.
Apparently, the compelling ideas behind Scorsese's newest vehicle have a nasty habit of backfiring from time to time. The Aviator may hold considerable merits--among them coherent plotting, complemented by expansive cinematography and set design. On top of that, Leonardo DiCaprio, fresh from two admirable performances in Gangs of New York and Catch Me If You Can, does a pitch-perfect rendition of Hughes, a confirmed loony and playboy multi-millionaire. But therein lies the problem. As Chris Rock told The New York Times, The Aviator is ultimately "about a rich guy who gets things done" and "overcame obstacles, like how much money to spend."
Like no other director, Scorsese knows how to mine the savagery of mundane life for almost-poetic insight. Mean Streets and The Color of Money, for instance, lent personal significance to immense incongruity. However, Scorsese pretty much reverses course in The Aviator. In this finely-ordered scale model of film's golden age, we never gain a deep sense of why Hughes mattered, whom he impacted, or whether his accomplishments were really heartfelt or inspired.
The movie opens with a Gothic, unsettling clip of Hughes' mother bathing her adolescent son by hand. But then, The Aviator shifts into a driving account of the young Howard and his often astounding accomplishments. We watch Hughes set out to make a series of high-budget films, starting with the aviation spectacle Hell's Angels. Soon, Hughes penetrates the upper circles of Hollywood's elite, his reputation built on features like Scarface and the Outlaw. With girls including Jean Harlow (Gwen Stefani), Kate Hepburn (Kate Blanchett), and Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsdale) following him down the red carpet and into bed, Hughes is a man at the top of his game.
Then things start to go wrong. For the first half of The Aviator, Hughes is high on success, aside from something of a boob fetish and a hand washing obsession. Yet when he tires of directing blockbusters and setting airplane speed records, Hughes tries to establish himself in the commercial airline industry. His designs crashing, and a duo of jealous bureaucrats (Alec Baldwin and Alan Alda) dismembering his enterprise, Scorsese's fortunate son slips into the version of himself modern audiences recognize--crazy hair and long fingernails included.
It's funny how that haunting first scene may be the movie's most significant. Although Hughes ranted about cleanliness and sought strength in a succession of mother figures, textbook psychology is beside the point. No matter how rich or renowned he became, Hughes is depicted in The Aviator as a callow boy fighting to win big in a man's world. DiCaprio, who doesn't look like an adult and probably never will, makes Hughes vulnerable and pitiful in his insanity, but always unapologetic.
Most other characters are scenery, but a few, like Blanchett's Kate Hepburn, sporadically come alive. Her performance, sometimes a highfalutin' mimic of Hepburn's screen persona, sometimes your standard Hollywood liberal, is nonetheless her most spirited and energetic turn yet. There are even a few moments where she exhibits the kind of genuine niceness and sympathy that is all but alien to Hughes. More notably, Alda and Baldwin, as a crooked senator and his airline executive buddy respectively, scheme like Shakespearean villains in roles versatile enough to make up for any bias against them.
Still, DiCaprio, rebellious and single-minded, strives to dominate every scene. He has the craziness bit mastered, from the blank stare to the repetitious destructive habits, that he can indulge in a few unnecessary acting pleasures, like tender womanizing and fight-the-machine-style rhetoric near the end. This is his movie--far more, unfortunately, than Scorsese's.
The Aviator almost seems like a conscious departure from the material Scorsese enjoys, primarily urban violence and quirky alternate history. Without that passion, we are only rarely treated to the stylized power that Scorsese regularly provides, despite a handle on mental chaos halfway reminiscent of Taxi Driver's. Hughes emerges in The Aviator not as a hero, but a curiosity, a warped character locked into a glamorous setting. Yet he's a curiosity that warrants our attention.
