What's Eating Howard Hughes
Martin Scorsese's The Aviator is big, loud, audacious and totally disinteresting to those (including me) who are fed up with so-called biopics, whatever that term's supposed to mean. Fans of Mr. Scorsese's work—and, except for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, this writer is not among them—will probably worship watching flyboy Howard Hughes as he gets his wings clipped.
That is the destination of The Aviator, which dramatizes the anti-conceptual theme that using one's mind means losing one's mind. Businessman Hughes, from his manic making of Hell's Angels, through his early efforts with Hughes Aircraft, air speed records, Trans World Airlines, slimy politicians and Hollywood stars, is a nut case. It's three hours of watching a millionaire go mad and, because Mr. Scorsese and writer John Logan (Star Trek: Nemesis) never show why Hughes' achievements matter, it is maddeningly dull.
It is also beautiful. Flight scenes soar, with shiny metal airplanes against vast landscapes and endless sky and, for the first hour, Mr. Scorsese embarks on a celebration of critical thinking in a fascinating field of endeavor—engineering. Leonardo DiCaprio's Hughes is the compulsive flyer and would-be creator, barking orders, insisting that rivets be flush against the plane's frame, and always at full throttle. But, from the beginning, The Aviator emphasizes the decline, not the ascent, of man.
With blurry motives—he is certainly not interested in making money or being happy—Hughes' goals lack real, dramatic impact. He buys a fleet of Lockheed's Constellation planes, which enabled TWA to introduce the first regularly scheduled nonstop flights between Los Angeles and New York, but it's presented as another kooky idea that trails off and ultimately fails. No lasting evidence of how Hughes changed commercial aviation is depicted. That leaves the audience with a so-what effect that casts a cloud over every aspect of his career.
Hughes flies around the world and buys an airline while soaring somewhere over Siberia—yet it happens offscreen. Each triumph is followed by another neurotic episode—fed by his severe mental illness—and one is subjected to a frenzy of freaking out that make one wonder why Mr. Scorsese bothered with such a prickly subject.
But that is his point: the ostensibly great man is always on the verge of lunacy. Tinny DiCaprio's quasi-autistic ramblings grate on the nerves and come off as campy rather than resonate as truly tragic. Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn, with whom Hughes apparently had an affair, is fine in an ambitious role that sparks the movie's highlights. When Hughes leaves Hepburn at the controls during a romantic night flight over Los Angeles, it tingles the toes. That's the closest to intimacy The Aviator gets.
Cast members are good, though Logan's script omits why no one bothered to tell Howard Hughes he was losing his mind. Matt Ross as Odie stands out as the best of Hughes' brain trusters, No Doubt singer Gwen Stefani does no harm as Jean Harlow, and Jude Law as Errol Flynn is pointless. Kate Beckinsale tries very hard as Ava Gardner but the Pearl Harbor babe lacks the moxie to pull off a portrayal of the sultry, saucy dark-haired dame.
The climax to this strangely cold, detached affair is a plane crash that magnifies what a reckless—not risk-taking—disaster Howard Hughes was. His life and work are in shambles, he's near death, and all he can do is mumble about being an aviator and complain about the orange juice. The drama of the crash, which destroys lives and homes, is followed by the hazy mindlessness of a broken man and it takes a dive from there. The scene skillfully captures Mr. Scorsese's philosophy that the creator is doomed because he creates and that today's audiences, or at least intellectuals, like their rich businessmen done stark raving mad.
DVD Notes
The Aviator's two-disc widescreen DVD, a good gift for aviation fans, is as exhaustive as the movie.
The usual quibbles arise: no printed booklet, no time stamps and the commentary is laborious. Voiceover by director Martin Scorsese, editor Thelma Schoonmaker and producer Michael Mann nets few insights. The trio always comes back to exhortations that billionaire businessman and flyer Howard Hughes was strange, flawed and diseased, which they think makes him interesting. As the movie ends, Mr. Scorsese asks and answers: "Why? Who knows. It's just life."
The disc two features are at least as interesting as The Aviator. Start with the History Channel's 45-minute tribute, Modern Marvels: Howard Hughes, A History Channel Documentary . Though clouded by loud music, writer and producer Lee Schneider's fact-based account shows a man barely present in the movie.
You'd never know from Leonardo DiCaprio's portrayal that Hughes invented the flexible ammunition line for fighter planes, secretly created a decoy ship for the Central Intelligence Agency to recover a sunken Soviet submarine and was responsible for advances in helicopters and live television. Hughes' company televised the first pictures of the moon.
The documentary makes a compelling case that the behemoth Hercules, derided in the press as the Spruce Goose, constitutes a monumental achievement, using blueprint-like graphics to demonstrate a system of hydraulic pumps that makes you want to cheer, not mock, the giant aircraft. By 1968, Hughes was the richest man in America, and it's not hard to see why in this feature, which salutes him as "one of the few aviation leaders who could fly one of his own products."
The 15-minute Role of Howard Hughes in Aviation History, which is also instructive, includes aerial acrobatics, biographers and cast and crew members, notably DiCaprio, who explains that Hughes' father was a self-made man who made his money by inventing a drill bit to excavate oil from the earth. Hughes also achieved the transcontinental flight record (from Burbank to Newark in 9.5 hours), taking his plane higher, faster and farther on less fuel, after experimenting high above Los Angeles. Non-stop cross-country flight had an enormous impact on aviation. As writer John Logan points out: "every time you fly nonstop to New York from Los Angeles, in a pressurized cabin, you owe that to Howard Hughes."
He's right, of course, which gives the biographical background bits an importance lacking in other extras. For example, Making The Aviator (ten minutes) is logical, with snippets of DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett and Kate Beckinsale among others, and it is admiring of Hughes as a creator, but it is too general and too personality-driven to cover the making of the movie.
A 12-minute feature on the picture's visual effects is like dessert following the movie—showing how talented technicians use the proper tools, such as radio-controlled miniature airplanes, to recreate reality. The Aviator's Beverly Hills airplane crash, for instance, was primarily depicted without using computers. Other bits—disc two unnecessarily divides features into four segments—are a mixed bag. The still photographs gallery is a treasure chest of over 100 color shots, which capture the movie's glamour and Mr. Scorsese's devotion to his work, but photos lack both captions and credits. Other features addressing music, make-up, costumes, design and more are mini-lessons in skilled, detailed filmmaking.
That is the destination of The Aviator, which dramatizes the anti-conceptual theme that using one's mind means losing one's mind. Businessman Hughes, from his manic making of Hell's Angels, through his early efforts with Hughes Aircraft, air speed records, Trans World Airlines, slimy politicians and Hollywood stars, is a nut case. It's three hours of watching a millionaire go mad and, because Mr. Scorsese and writer John Logan (Star Trek: Nemesis) never show why Hughes' achievements matter, it is maddeningly dull.
It is also beautiful. Flight scenes soar, with shiny metal airplanes against vast landscapes and endless sky and, for the first hour, Mr. Scorsese embarks on a celebration of critical thinking in a fascinating field of endeavor—engineering. Leonardo DiCaprio's Hughes is the compulsive flyer and would-be creator, barking orders, insisting that rivets be flush against the plane's frame, and always at full throttle. But, from the beginning, The Aviator emphasizes the decline, not the ascent, of man.
With blurry motives—he is certainly not interested in making money or being happy—Hughes' goals lack real, dramatic impact. He buys a fleet of Lockheed's Constellation planes, which enabled TWA to introduce the first regularly scheduled nonstop flights between Los Angeles and New York, but it's presented as another kooky idea that trails off and ultimately fails. No lasting evidence of how Hughes changed commercial aviation is depicted. That leaves the audience with a so-what effect that casts a cloud over every aspect of his career.
Hughes flies around the world and buys an airline while soaring somewhere over Siberia—yet it happens offscreen. Each triumph is followed by another neurotic episode—fed by his severe mental illness—and one is subjected to a frenzy of freaking out that make one wonder why Mr. Scorsese bothered with such a prickly subject.
But that is his point: the ostensibly great man is always on the verge of lunacy. Tinny DiCaprio's quasi-autistic ramblings grate on the nerves and come off as campy rather than resonate as truly tragic. Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn, with whom Hughes apparently had an affair, is fine in an ambitious role that sparks the movie's highlights. When Hughes leaves Hepburn at the controls during a romantic night flight over Los Angeles, it tingles the toes. That's the closest to intimacy The Aviator gets.
Cast members are good, though Logan's script omits why no one bothered to tell Howard Hughes he was losing his mind. Matt Ross as Odie stands out as the best of Hughes' brain trusters, No Doubt singer Gwen Stefani does no harm as Jean Harlow, and Jude Law as Errol Flynn is pointless. Kate Beckinsale tries very hard as Ava Gardner but the Pearl Harbor babe lacks the moxie to pull off a portrayal of the sultry, saucy dark-haired dame.
The climax to this strangely cold, detached affair is a plane crash that magnifies what a reckless—not risk-taking—disaster Howard Hughes was. His life and work are in shambles, he's near death, and all he can do is mumble about being an aviator and complain about the orange juice. The drama of the crash, which destroys lives and homes, is followed by the hazy mindlessness of a broken man and it takes a dive from there. The scene skillfully captures Mr. Scorsese's philosophy that the creator is doomed because he creates and that today's audiences, or at least intellectuals, like their rich businessmen done stark raving mad.
DVD Notes
The Aviator's two-disc widescreen DVD, a good gift for aviation fans, is as exhaustive as the movie.
The usual quibbles arise: no printed booklet, no time stamps and the commentary is laborious. Voiceover by director Martin Scorsese, editor Thelma Schoonmaker and producer Michael Mann nets few insights. The trio always comes back to exhortations that billionaire businessman and flyer Howard Hughes was strange, flawed and diseased, which they think makes him interesting. As the movie ends, Mr. Scorsese asks and answers: "Why? Who knows. It's just life."
The disc two features are at least as interesting as The Aviator. Start with the History Channel's 45-minute tribute, Modern Marvels: Howard Hughes, A History Channel Documentary . Though clouded by loud music, writer and producer Lee Schneider's fact-based account shows a man barely present in the movie.
You'd never know from Leonardo DiCaprio's portrayal that Hughes invented the flexible ammunition line for fighter planes, secretly created a decoy ship for the Central Intelligence Agency to recover a sunken Soviet submarine and was responsible for advances in helicopters and live television. Hughes' company televised the first pictures of the moon.
The documentary makes a compelling case that the behemoth Hercules, derided in the press as the Spruce Goose, constitutes a monumental achievement, using blueprint-like graphics to demonstrate a system of hydraulic pumps that makes you want to cheer, not mock, the giant aircraft. By 1968, Hughes was the richest man in America, and it's not hard to see why in this feature, which salutes him as "one of the few aviation leaders who could fly one of his own products."
The 15-minute Role of Howard Hughes in Aviation History, which is also instructive, includes aerial acrobatics, biographers and cast and crew members, notably DiCaprio, who explains that Hughes' father was a self-made man who made his money by inventing a drill bit to excavate oil from the earth. Hughes also achieved the transcontinental flight record (from Burbank to Newark in 9.5 hours), taking his plane higher, faster and farther on less fuel, after experimenting high above Los Angeles. Non-stop cross-country flight had an enormous impact on aviation. As writer John Logan points out: "every time you fly nonstop to New York from Los Angeles, in a pressurized cabin, you owe that to Howard Hughes."
He's right, of course, which gives the biographical background bits an importance lacking in other extras. For example, Making The Aviator (ten minutes) is logical, with snippets of DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett and Kate Beckinsale among others, and it is admiring of Hughes as a creator, but it is too general and too personality-driven to cover the making of the movie.
A 12-minute feature on the picture's visual effects is like dessert following the movie—showing how talented technicians use the proper tools, such as radio-controlled miniature airplanes, to recreate reality. The Aviator's Beverly Hills airplane crash, for instance, was primarily depicted without using computers. Other bits—disc two unnecessarily divides features into four segments—are a mixed bag. The still photographs gallery is a treasure chest of over 100 color shots, which capture the movie's glamour and Mr. Scorsese's devotion to his work, but photos lack both captions and credits. Other features addressing music, make-up, costumes, design and more are mini-lessons in skilled, detailed filmmaking.
