This on-the-surface look at the life and times of one of America's most notorious recluses delivers plenty of dirt, if not much introspection. The mysterious Howard Hughes is certainly a tricky subject to nail down, with much of his daring decision-making and eventual descent into madness left officially undocumented, but I still haven't managed to shake the sense that there's a lot of meat to this story that's just been left outside to rot.
Cate Blanchett is positively enveloping in her role as Katharine Hepburn, for which she deservedly won an Oscar, but the rest of the cast feels too careful and uncertain, particularly Leonardo DiCaprio's turn as Hughes himself. Leo's eyes don't seem bright enough to concoct the miracles he's performing, while his smirk lacks the cocksure authenticity that would make the most powerful men in the country shudder. Director Martin Scorsese seems similarly lost amidst such complicated material, which comes as a real surprise. Scorsese hammers his audience over the head with the outward symptoms that made Hughes such a curious individual in his later years, but falls short in examining the reasonable, humanizing concerns that led to such paralyzing compulsions.
As an adventurous history lesson one could do far worse, but for such a long run time and so colorful a subject to deliver so few answers is a major disappointment.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2016-04-09T23:07:28Z
What is the line between insanity and brilliance? Is it broad or thin? Does the one bleed into the other? The Aviator, Martin Scorcese's epic look at the life and times of Hoard Hughes, suggests that the two are intertwined, at least in this one man. The film follows him from his first crazy moviemaking schemes in the California desert to his great aviation triumph at a time when his psychoses have started to overwhelm his senses.
It's a "Great Man" biopic, so it hits some the expected beats. There's casual "cameos" by celebrities and notable figures of the time, a "nobody believed in me" set of obstacles, and wild but flawed individual at the center of it, figuring out his path from neophyte to bigwig. But Scorsese has the right touch to bring out the best of the form, balancing the big moments in Hughes's life with quieter scenes to explicate his fears and neuroses.
At the center of it all is Leonardo DiCaprio's crackerjack performance as Hughes. I have to admit, I'm not always a big fan of DiCaprio's performances, which I tend to find technically sound but rarely unique or moving. But here, he is a man on fire, playing the noted eccentric with an almost rabid charm and head full of dreams, but also conveying the man's vulnerabilities, and the way his mental deterioration eats at him as he tries to barrel past it. Short of his turn in Wolf of Wall Street, this is the most I've seen DiCaprio truly inhabit a character, and he gives many different shades and layers to the man in both his grand successes and utter failures.
Fortunately, DiCaprio has an equal to play off of in Cate Blanchett's stunning turn as Katharine Hepburn. Going into the film, I'd heard Blanchett's performance derided as a mere impression, but nothing could be further from the truth. While Blanchett certainly does well to capture the distinctive tone and rhythms of Hepburn, she imbues the character with such life, with a zest for the thrills of the world, a fear that she'll be exposed as a "freak," and a supreme insecurity that her days in the spotlight are over.
Hepburn's patter in the film is reminiscent of the real life actress's exchanges on the screen, but Blacnhett gives new dimension to it with her subtle change of expression when Hughes shows her how to fly, when she warns Howard not to let the press eat him up, and most notably, when she tells him that if he looses his mind, she'll be there to "take the wheel." Theirs is the most multi-faceted and engrossing relationship in the film, and that makes it all the more heartbreaking when it dissolves. Hepburn's nervous, affected laugh when Howard accuses her of always being on is stunning, and Howard's anger, and his bonkers response to burn all his clothes, everything that he'd worn while being with her, is another stepping stone toward his insanity.
The film engages in strong symbolism when it comes to signposting Hughes's growing neurosis. The opening scene features his mother bathing him, quarantining him, instilling in him a fear of sickness and germs and the creepy crawlies he can't see. She washes him with a special bar of soap, and in that cleansing bath, he's surrounded by lights.
As the film goes on, it shows the effect this seminal moment had on him. It dramatizes his germophobia well, depicting him as unable to so much as take one bite of his steak after Errol Flynn steals a pea off of his plate, heightening his perspective as he looks at a what appears to him to be a diseased roast at the Hepburn estate, and most strikingly in the film, refusing to hand a disabled man a wash cloth because it would require him to sully his hands.
That what makes it so powerful in the few times when he overcomes his phobia. The film doesn't have to tell you that Hughes and Hepburn have reached an important level of intimacy, it shows you, by depicting Howard offering Katharine a sip from his milk bottle, and then having a drink of it himself. In the same way, his commitment to his company and well-being are palpable in his meeting with Senator Brewster, who serves him a fish that stares back at him, and a water glass with a smudge, meant to unnerve Hughes, but Howard soldiers on.
The Aviator does well to show these neuroses growing. He slowly but surely feels the need to use his own soap more and more, to where he's washing his own shirt in the sink and waiting in the restroom like a prisoner rather than put his hand on a filthy doorknob to let himself out. He finds himself repeating things, a problem that becomes more pronounced as the film wears on, and culminates at the end of the film. Then there's the flashbulbs of all those press cameras, bringing back the flashes of those spherical lights that surrounded him in that quarantine cleanse, reminding him where he came from and what he's afraid of.
Apart from the brilliant performances and symbolism in the film, it's a complete visual treat as well. Scorsese and his collaborators color-correct the film to a tee, giving it a sepia-tinge that communicates the lost time of the film's setting. But they also give it these beautiful splashes of color, turning the film into toothpaste -- a wash of muted reds and seafoam greens. Scorsese's camera cuts across the joyous tumult of a Hollywood party, or follows a flurry of planes swarming in the air as Hughes fills the sky for his Hell's Angels picture, or shoots his great men, be they protagonist or antagonist, from behind, leaving them imposing but featureless.
The Aviator depicts its protagonist as constantly pushing, constantly thinking and dreaming bigger than those around him can imagine, or at least would advise. It also shows him paying a cost for this, suggesting that there is a price for this kind of thinking that is extracted from one's mental well-being. Even Hughes's final triumph in the film -- his rebuke of Brewster at the Senate hearings, his defeat of the slimy Juan Trippe in his scheme to take out his competitor, and the flight of his Hercules, an embodiment of the scope and audacity of his ideas forged in rubber and steel, are tinged with the unavoidable onslaught of his verbal tic. In Scorsese's film, Howard Hughes is very much the way of the future, but that thought, and all the good that this mentality brings, eventually overtakes him, and tells us that even the titans of old can have feet of clay.