The Aviator 
Directed: Martin Scorsese
Written by: John Logan
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, John C. Reilly, Alec Baldwin, Alan Alda, Ian Holm.
Country: USA

       

Two and a half Spruce Gooses
 

Reviewed by Hal Gray

Scorsese Just Gets This Goose Off The Ground.

Cate Blanchett sums up The Aviator in the first ten minutes of the film. As a fiercely independent Katharine Hepburn, she says to young multimillionaire Howard Hughes (played by Leo DiCaprio) who's thrown everything into making the most expensive movie ever made, "A movie is a movie, Howard. Not life."

So make no mistake. From the horrid hyper-colour film stock and third-rate colour processing, to the ‘march of time' newsreel schtick, to the in your face mad, bad, and over-clad Hollywood of the ‘30s, this bio-pic about one of America's true eccentrics, Hughes, can't be seen as anything approximating real life. For example, just when you might be pulled into the story, a plateful of fluorescent turquoise peas or a purple field of artichokes reminds you you're in movieland.

Hughes and his amazing natural abilities as an aeronautic innovator and businessman is a larger than life character. The fact that he was bedding down movie stars along the way doesn't hurt the American Dream image. That's why several different producers over the past few decades have been trying to get his story on screen. But like Hughes' life, something always seems to go wrong. Perhaps more intriguing about the man was his manic disposition, ironically corralled by an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Scorsese's film deals with two tumultuous decades—the 1920s and ‘30s—when Hughes' naïve yet brilliant vision for aeronautics and films perfectly jibes with these two new and changing industries. The tragedy is that he's defeated by his neuroses.

Perhaps Scorsese is defeated by such a large canvas. The initial event of Hughes taking three years to film Hell's Angels, a behemoth of a picture about WWI dogfights, is certainly exciting, and so are Hughes' test flights while trying and succeeding in breaking the air-speed record. But that's over with in the first half-hour, and there's still 75% of the film to go. More unwieldy, and less cinematic, are Hughes' fight to get TWA in the air against Pan American Airways and U.S. regulators who are in Pan Am's pocket. The final 30 minutes—a long scene before a senate committee—almost sinks the picture. Sensing this, Scorsese plunks in an awkward out-of-time action sequence where Hughes barely gets his infamous Spruce Goose in the air. (Actually called the Hercules, it was made out of plywood and was the world's largest plane.) Humourous, in an unintentional way, are the body doubles bouncing around in the cockpit. Then we're back to the senate hearings.

The film is most successful with Hughes' relationship with Hepburn. That they meant something to one another, but were too independent to make it last, was bittersweet and fulfilling. Also, DiCaprio shows a range he's not shown often in depicting Hughes' OCD troubles as they develop. Unfortunately, his voice croaks a great deal of the time. Without the charm of, say, a Jimmy Stewart croak, it begins to wear after a while. Still, this is some of his best work to date and arguably it could be said he owns the part.

Blanchett is superb as Hepburn. Kate Beckinsale is noticeably miscast as Ava Gardner, as is Gwen Stefani in a cameo playing Jean Harlow. John C. Reilly as Hughes' go-to guy, and Alec Baldwin as the head of Pan Am, turn in journeyman performances. Alan Alda is quite effective in that he mostly leaves the scenery unchewed. Ian Holm is in for comic effect as what can only be described as a little, Swiss clock-maker. Jude Law, keeping his record intact of being in every movie made in 2004, is a credible Errol Flynn.

It would be a shame if Scorsese ends up being feted by the Academy for a picture not of his best work. But maybe he'll take it, considering we haven't seen his best work in a while.

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