With The Aviator, Martin Scorsese delivers a surprisingly breezy and engrossing (if not especially credible) biopic of renowned aviator, millionaire, film director and germophobe Howard Hughes. Unlike many similar films, which seem constantly to be playing catch-up with their real-life subjects, ever vying for an elusive historical accuracy, Scorsese’s film immediately announces itself as a grand-scale fiction. With highly stylized action set-pieces (worthy of Hughes’ own grandiose efforts with Hell’s Angels), a first act shot entirely in a simulation of two-strip Technicolor, and a healthy dose of paranoid hallucinations, the film avoids the usual biopic pitfall of handling its subject with historiographic kid-gloves. This is particularly evident in Cate Blanchett’s embodiment of Katherine Hepburn, a performance that is alternately absurd and touching, mimetic and autonomous. And like Blanchett, Leonardo DiCaprio handles his duties as Hughes admirably, as both a batty caricature and a flawed, fleshy incarnation of his subject. Through Scorsese and DiCaprio, Hughes emerges as both a neurotic Charles Foster Kane and a pampered Travis Bickle — reprehensible, pitiable and magnetic.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: 35mm Print
24 Jan 2005 12:17 PM | Submit Comment