The Aviator and Oscar potential
The Oscar nominations were released today. Martin Scorcese's directorial film, The Aviator was nominated for 11 - count 'em, 11 - Academy Awards, including nods for best picture, best director, best actor and supporting actor and actress.

My family and I happened to have seen the movie last Saturday. Herewith some thoughts. First up, my eleven-year-old daughter's review:

Lately, I have seen a really good movie, The Aviator. This completely new movie is about the widely-known Howard Hughes. He was extremely futuristic. He was also really into aerodynamics.

The movie is unbelievably long. It is especially good. But in the end Howard is finally congratulated for his giant plane, the Hercules, and kind of goes loony.

Looney, all right. Let me pause here and say that had I known the dialogue was a profanity-laced as it was, I would not have taken daughter to the movie. We actually went to see Phantom of the Opera, but it sold out as we waited in line ( a very long line). Having invested all that time to get to the front of the line, we opted for the Hughes biopic.

And herewith a caution: you'd expect a movie titled The Aviator to be about flying in some way. But this movie isn't about flying, though there are some decent flying sequences in it. It's a psycho-profile of Howard Hughes's descent into obsessive-compulsive reclusiveness.

For his performance of a man slowly losing control of his mind and body - even the control of his speech - Leonard DiCaprio rightly deserves the Oscar nom. He won't get it, though, as I think Jamie Foxx has the best male-lead performance statue wrapped up for Ray.

But credit to where it is due: with this movie Leo has finally, fully vanquished his lingering rep that's he just a boyish, heart throbbish matinee idol whose posters are pinned on wall by teenie-age girls. They may still pin them, but Leo's maturation as an actor fit for deep roles is proven. The historical Howard Hughes was bigger than life. It would have been easy to over-act the part, especially the "loony" moments. But DiCaprio shines. His best moments come in the scenes as Hughes testifies to a hostile Senate committee headed by Sen. Ralph Owen Brewster (Alan Alda, carrying the water for the best male supporting actor).

The intensity DiCaprio shows in those scenes as Hughes, who knows he's being railroaded and fights back vigorously, is magnified by the fact that the audience knows Hughes's internal war against his OCD could be lost at any moment. Throughout, DiCaprio plays the scenes so that we know Hughes is barely containing his mental disability, channeling his fear and anguish over it into devastating attacks on Brewster, whom he subdues into a whimpering, ineffective clown by the end of the sequences. All this is simply superbly done.

Cate Blanchett plays Katherine Hepburn, who spent a few years living with Howard (without benefit of clergy, I might add) and finally leaves him for Spencer Tracy. Suffice to say that Blanchett takes Hepburn's scalp in her portrayal of the not-yet-famous actress, and Blanchett's Oscar nom is also deserved. That woman becomes Katherine Hepburn and utterly outshines Kate Beckinsale, playing Ava Gardner. Kate's considerable beauty simply can't compete with Cate's self-transformation into Hepburn.

Last, the airplanes and flying sequences. The science and art of CGI has arrived in full power. Hughes Aircraft Corp.'s planes are faithfully rendered in both CGI and mockups. There are many in-air sequences when the CGI is so well done you wonder for a moment just how much money it cost to build the planes just for the movie. The flight sequence of the radical XF-11 prototype is simply spectacular. Its terrible crash in a Beverly Hills neighborhood is faithful to the real event, though perhaps a bit overdone. An earlier sequence of Hughes setting a world speed record in his plane, the H-1, seamlessly integrates CGI with live-action better than any movie I've seen so far. (The Spruce Goose sequence was not nearly as well done, for some reason.) But as I indicated, actual flying is not a large part of the movie.

The only real criticism I have, apart from the too-frequent profanity, is that Scorcese unfortunately assumed that his viewers already know who Howard Hughes was and why he was an important figure in American business and aviation. As the movie does relate, rather parabolically, Hughes was a fantastically accomplished flyer - he actually once held every important airplane speed record and was named the world's best aviator of the year in 1937. He was also a crucial figure in aviation business, owning both an aircraft company at TWA.

But his story, as told by Scorcese and crew, is not very compelling on the screen to people too young to remember his dramatic 1972 telephone press conference denying the authenticity of Clifford Irving's biography of him. The movie ends well short of Hughes's move into total seclusion atop a Las Vegas hotel. My seventeen-year-old pronounced the movie a long shaggy-dog story, principally because the movie really just stops rather than ends. The stop make sense to those who know Hughes's life story, but probably frustrates those who don't.

Overall, I give The Aviator eight propeller blades out of 10.

by Donald Sensing, 1/25/2005 10:18:17 PM. Permalink |