The Unseen Movie Review

The Aviator

Hollywood loves making films about itself, and sometimes these films really hit the mark – the very different likes of Singin’ in the Rain, Ed Wood, The Player and Mulholland Drive all take very different aspects of LA’s film quarter and produce brilliant yet very different films from the material. The world loves a good film and, especially in this age of DVD, we have all become movie-buffs.

The Aviator has got to be the biggest, most expensive film about films ever made. Directed by everyone’s favourite former Indy filmmaker and perennial Academy Award runner-up, Martin Scorsese, it is a biopic of the near-legendary Hollywood producer Howard Hughes (played here by Leonardo DiCaprio) – a name that may still ring bells even though he died nearly thirty years ago.

Hughes was one of the most fascinating figures of the twentieth century. The multi-millionaire heir of a Texas entrepreneur, he came to Hollywood at the dawn of the sound era, fascinated by the movies and determined to make a name for himself as a producer. He used his wealth to fund a string of hit movies between the 1920s and 1950s, and piled the profits into a series of eclectic business ventures, a high-end lifestyle filled with dates with the stars of the screen from Katherine Hepburn (here played by Cate Blanchett) to Ava Gardener (played by Kate Beckinsale), and his other great love – aeroplanes.

The range, capacity and genius of the man were astounding. He was a record-breaking pilot; the inventor of the push-up bra, the world’s largest passenger aircraft and a deep sea rescue vessel; he bought television stations and used them as his own personal video recorders; he even bought up most of Las Vegas from the mafia, and turned it into a (fairly) respectable, yet still highly profitable operation, and was an expert consultant to the CIA for the recovery of Soviet technology during the Cold War. At the same time, he became perhaps the ultimate eccentric, gradually withdrawing from public life to spend his last two decades a complete recluse, hidden away in hotel rooms, never to be seen, and terrified of germs and – bizarrely – nail clippers, thanks to his increasing obsessive-compulsive disorder.

In short, he is a brilliant subject for a big-budget biographical treatment. His life story has everything – wealth, glamour, involvement with other big names and events of his time, and weird, almost tragic personality flaws.

Yet to cover his whole seven-decade life in a single film would be nigh-on impossible – and in any case, the final twenty-odd years would simply involve an old, scared and lonely man sitting in hotel rooms afraid of human contact. Scorsese has sensibly, if sadly, opted to focus on Hughes’ early life, before his paranoia and eccentricities truly kicked in.

Instead we get Hughes’ Hollywood and piloting years, with all the glamour of the glitzy side of the 1930s and 40s. Scorsese has made every effort to do him justice, with an epic production and supporting cast to match which ranges from Alec Baldwin and Sir Ian Holm to Willem Dafoe and the ubiquitous Jude Law (as the dashing Errol Flynn).

It is a great re-creation of the era, aided immensely by the vast cast of big-name stars and character actors, and displays Hughes’ genius to perfect effect. The man himself may well have approved, but still one can’t help feeling sorry that so much of his eventful life has had to be left out. But as Hughes was more than aware, such is the way with Hollywood.

posted by Nosemonkey @ 12:00 AM