The Aviator | Review

Scorsese’s boards route to Oscar glory with gorgeous, highly entertaining film.

There is a common denominator between the Italian-American film director with thick eyebrows and his subject matter – both have immense passion and a bigger-than-life ambition for their personal projects. Like Hughes and his million ton spruce goose, finally, one of the greatest contemporary American filmmaker’s in modern cinema may hoist his own piece of metal (think statuette) into the air. After being rebuffed for so long, it’s hard to believe that this valentine to Hollywood moviemaking with a classical-built narrative won’t find its way among most top ten lists and that Scorsese won’t find himself basking in his own flashbulb glory. With The Aviator, Scorsese delivers his best work since Goodfellas – this large scale production about a man who lived big, – offers brilliant acting, an impeccable production design, a beautiful Technicolor-inspired tint and seamlessly entertaining CGI air combat action.

It’s thanks to the big, maniacal dreamers in life such as the Howard Hughes that the concept of the American Dream still flies high today. The introductory childhood sequence matches the instilled obsessive behavior of a boy with a young man’s early signs of madness and compulsiveness. Leonardo DiCaprio ( Catch Me If You Can) furiously captures the Hughes persona; it takes some time to realize that his take on the loony tycoon is one of the year’s best and one of his career’s best performances. Cate Blanchett own ( The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou) one-betters the actor – her performance as Katharine Hepburn is astonishing lifelike – she channels the aura of the great dame. Such brilliant performances are matched by the tremendous technical achievement. From the large-scale Hell’s Angels set to the big Hollywood parties and to Hughes’ attention-getting red-carpet entrances with beautiful Hollywood starlets, Scorsese’s beautiful production design details the grandeur and the spectacle of Hughes.

With John Logan’s script which brings out the fascinating public biography and elaborates on the private madness – Scorsese has found his own (Citizen Kane) – his big-set, big production approach emulates the character’s personality. The problem with a biopic is knowing what bases to cover and which to leave out – one certainly feels that the courting sequence with Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale – Laurel Canyon) and the court sequence for tax evasion are a tad too dry. The narrative throttle from the live-action sequences equilibrates well with the dramatic turns, and thankfully while Scorsese washes his hands from touching the more obscure and tormented moments of the Hughes personality, he does manage to detail Hughes’ disintegration – an all to important sequence that shows Hughes barricaded from the outside world speaks volumes of his tarnished later-in-life existence. While there are spurts in the narrative that run low on fuel and some sequences feel as if they could have been cut out, The Aviator is the type of epic film that celebrates the lives of two great geniuses.

Rating 4 stars