Scorsese Soars
Howard Hughes's Genius Is Revealed Through Scorsese's Mastery
By Cole Smithey
Martin Scorsese delivers a movie that lives up to his promise as a master of his craft.
After a string of miscalculated films such as "Kundun," "Bringing Out The Dead" and "Gang's Of New York" audiences have an opportunity to grasp the brilliance of Scorsese's encyclopedic knowledge of filmmaking and visionary ability to work with a broad dramatic palate of passion, personality, and milieu. Leonardo DiCaprio gives an eloquent portrayal of Howard Hughes, as one of the 20th century's most creative and tragically flawed figures.
The performance is credible as it is a pure joy to behold.
Screenwriter John Logan ("Gladiator") deserves special praise for his terse script that emphasizes Hughes's life from his 1920s independent directorial movie effort to his 1940s congressional showdown over military contracts with the U.S. government to provide airplanes during WW II.
Scorsese opens the film with an introduction scene of Hughes as a child being bathed by his mother during a flu quarantine. The darkly lit scene resonates with the opening of Orson Welles's "Citizen Kane." The lasting effects of Hughes's adolescent experience with germs and his mother's strict warnings inform every aspect of his personal and private adult life.
From its dynamic introduction of the 21-year-old Hughes working on the set of his dogfight-themed epic war movie "Hell's Angels," Scorsese sets a hot tempo for the story that reflects the rapid-fire mind of its larger-than-life protagonist.
As the first act of the film focuses on Hughes's relentless effort to fulfill his cinematic vision in spite of Hollywood rivals, we are drawn into his innate engineering ability as a pilot to fearlessly design and redesign airplanes that he daringly flies to assist in shooting his movie.
Although "Hell's Angels" was already the most expensive film ever made when it finished shooting, Hughes insisted on reshooting it because he was unhappy with the midair dogfights that lacked background clouds to give the audience a reference for the rapid speed of the planes. But by the time he had re-filmed the sequences, sound had entered into cinema with Al Jolsen's "The Jazz Singer."
Hughes insisted on reshooting his film again to give audiences the most entertaining experience he could. The episode provides a microcosm for Hughes's astuteness and nervous perfectionism that paid off in spades when "Hell's Angels" was released to massive public acclaim.
During the daily grind of Hughes's filmmaking experiences, Scorsese and DiCaprio lock in on the dueling aspects of the man that enabled him to create on a grand scale that was unimaginable even to those near him. The clincher here is Scorsese's masterful blending of design aspects and seamless digital technology to create a look for "The Aviator" that is similar to the two-strip and three-strip Technicolor film stock Hughes used for his movies.
The appearance is lush and seductive without drawing attention to itself as occurred with the sleep-inducing look of "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow." The flight sequences are, at turns, poetic, striking, and surprising as they instill in the viewer Hughes's intense appreciation for aviation. Cinematographer Robert Richardson's keen eye is always perfectly focused.
The introduction of Katherine Hepburn into Hughes's personal world in the early '30s is marked by Cate Blanchett's extraordinary rendition of the legendary actress. Ms. Blanchett's unmistakable visage is momentarily unrecognizable when she enters the screen during a round of golf with the instantly charmed Howard Hughes.
The romantic chemistry between Hepburn and Hughes becomes a touchstone for the audience to identify with the characters via a collective subconscious idea of the cultural icons as unique people somehow cut from similar wood. Needless to say, the chemistry between DiCaprio and Blanchett is a palpable thing that audiences automatically respond to.
The couple's ideal intimate life begins to crack when Hepburn invites him to meet her openly socialist family in Connecticut. As the family condescends to Hughes at their dinner table, Hughes observes a side of 'Kate' that he is unable to mitigate. The scene is a brilliant and complex example of Hughes navigating a social situation where openly ignorant intelligent people challenge his immense intellect and charisma.
As Hughes' nervous tics and hygienic obsessions increasingly plague him, he presses more into his desire for speed that sees him break the world speed record in 1936 in the H-1 Racer that he personally designed without any formal training in aeronautics. Audiences will be flabbergasted by one spectacular crash landing sequence-there are two-that is a model of visual style and cinematic organization.
"The Aviator" is a glorious biographical view of Howard Hughes as a futurist capable of melding airplanes with his own hands. It is also a story about the enormous adversities Hughes rose above in order to achieve his deeply personal mission. The triumph of the film is how it unites the audience with its subject in a way that enables you to share in a unique quality of genius that is rarely attained in life, or in film.
Rated PG-13. 168 mins.
