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| The Aviator
Directed By: Martin Scorsese Plot
Summary - Review 1 - Review
2 - CURRENT REVIEWS
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| Focusing on his early years (from the 1930 production of 'Hell's Angels' to the 1947 test flight of the Blue Spruce, when he was 42), this is the story of how young Howard Hughes transformed a small fortune into a massive one. The son of the Texan inventor of an amazing drill bit who died when he was 18, leaving him with 75% of the "Hughes Tool Co.", Howard Hughes (DiCaprio) quickly moved to Los Angeles to become a Hollywood film producer, where he helped launch the career of Jean Harlow and other starlets, and producing such classics as Hell's Angels, The Front Page, Flying Leathernecks, and Scarface (the 1932 original), eventually owning RKO Pictures. Hughes' legend came not from focusing on just Hollywood, however, as he simultaneously branched into industry after industry, including aviation in 1932 (including TWA Airlines), and during WWII, defense, leading to the creation of the (infamous) Spruce Goose, a flying boat of immense size. After WWII, Hughes' expansions continued, with an electronics company that was integral to the evolution of the satellite, and Hughes' several Las Vegas casinos (though this film may be ending before he moves there). This film will also focus on Hughes' romances with Hollywood stars like Katharine Hepburn (Blanchett) and Ava Gardner (Beckinsale). (Huston plays the president of TWA; Baldwin plays the president of their competitor, Pan Am)... [TRAILER] Most impressive about Martin Scorsese’s biopic “The Aviator” is that, outside a few later segments, this does not have the feel of a historical catalogue, systematically chronicling the life of one of the most interesting Americans to have ever lived. I have seen so many of this year’s historical dramas deteriorate into procedural, belabored affairs. Remembering “Alexander,” “Troy,” “Ray” and even “Finding Neverland,” they felt like they were passing one checkpoint after another, fulfilling the required progression and routine. In “The Aviator,” we are plunged immediately into the story of the flamboyant Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio), and his obsessive production of the film “Hell’s Angels.” It was to be his great American epic about the fighter pilots of World War I, and his right-hand man Noah Dietrich (John C. Reilly) watches in amazement as he wastes thousands of dollars a day, waiting for the perfect clouds to fill the skies over southern California to give his picture just the right look. Hughes, who would later go on to become owner of one of the world’s largest airlines, renowned playboy among Hollywood’s leading ladies, charitable philanthropist and prominent Las Vegas developer, is immediately identifiable as the prototypical American personality. He inherited a tool company from his father, and set his sights on being the best at anything that interested him. It started with movies, and in “The Aviator’s” earliest scenes we see a man who will stop at nothing and spare no expense in bringing the vision he wanted to the screen, mortgaging his company to find the needed funds to complete his spectacle. Later, he buys Transcontinental & West Airlines, building spy planes for the United States government, taking on Pan Am in the arena of inter-continental flight, and building the now legendary “Spruce Goose,” which was a massive war plane built entirely of wood. Like so many visionaries, his limitations were internal. Always present, through Hughes’ triumphs and accomplishments, was his phobia of germs and his obsessive-compulsive tendencies that both made him a successful perfectionist and a hypochondriac. The great biopics juxtapose the greatness of their subjects with the flaws, and it is here that Scorsese really makes his mark in “The Aviator.” This film is not rosy, or idealized, but dark and dirty. Hughes obsesses over the cleanliness of those around him, panics when backed into a corner, and one of the film’s most affecting moments is when Hughes allows Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett) to drink from his bottle of milk, and then continues to drink it himself. By the end, like so many other tragic characters in the movies, Hughes devolves into a hysterical state. And it is here where DiCaprio delivers one of the few great performances of 2004. Locked away in his estate, preserving his urine in bottles, terrified of disease and only talking to people through a locked door, DiCaprio captures both the tortured Hughes who could no longer function, and the determined, youthful iconoclast who breaks through this neurotic surface to defend himself and his company against a biased Congressional investigation. Ambition has been in short supply in Hollywood this year, but in “The Aviator” Scorsese’s imagination seems limitless. We see the Hughes of the movies, of the air, of the dating scene and of the mentally deranged, each explored in a story that moves forward at its own pace, carving out its own vision. 2004 has been the year of the timid and the cautious. A sure-fire nominee for Best Picture, “The Aviator” delivers the psychological punch that Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York” lacked. This is a work of ambition, never apologizing for its boldness and not afraid to think big and talk loud. It’s the kind of movie Hughes would have liked.
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