Filmic Friday 235: The Aviator

The Aviator
2004; Martin Scorsese dir.
Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchette, Kate Beckinsale

I'm being given a wonderful opportunity to watch all of the great movies I missed out on due to either being a wuss or just... not liking DiCaprio when he was at the dawn of his career (since my older sisters were obsessssssssed). Today's review is for a movie I never thought I'd see, but I've been quoting it for years. I was sat down in front of The Aviator, the 2004 biopic about Howard Hughes starring DiCaprio and directed by Scorsese.

And it's so much better than I though it might be!
And I thought it'd be great, since it's Scorsese.

I'm big into period pieces (and apparently, so is Alec Baldwin, but I'll get into that later), so this was a fairly easy sell for me. Set in the 1920s-1940s, this film follows the rise and collapse of Howard Hughes, industrialist, filmmaker, and sufferer from OCD. I'm serious - this is one of the best takes on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder I've seen in movies. It's not played as something silly or harmless - you see how it destroys everything it brushes past. Hughes is a slave to his delusions, which are so not helped by the fact that basically everyone is actually out to get him.

We start with his mother bathing him during one of the many outbreaks of disease he avoided as a child, and boy, does she seem a little crazy too. My guess is the OCD ran in his family. Maybe don't tell your child that he's not safe. Maybe tell him you'll do everything you can to protect him, instead.

Eventually, though, we come back to him as he's trying to shoot a totally bananas war movie and refusing to accept that, just maybe, he's going overboard. He reshoots everything multiple times (and waits for almost a year for cloud cover to shoot against), reshoots it again for sound, and even after the premier, which he was basically forced to hold, he's still trying to edit the thing!

Through it all, DiCaprio is fantastic, especially when playing off of a very put-upon John C Reilly.

The movie isn't afraid to show us the many loves of Howard Hughes, either, including the incomparable Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn!

Seriously, she's awesome!

This movie did, however, have me wondering if, perhaps, Hughes was a bit color blind. You see the blue in the picture above? That's all green. I'm not sure why there's green in any scenes with cameras but blue whenever it's the two of them or whenever he's away from cameras, but that's how it is. It's fascinating.

Regardless, the main pivot of the movie rests on the OCD and how it's making the eventual legal troubles between Hughes and Pan-Am's attempt at a monopoly on international air travel (assisted by Senator Brewster, played by Alan Alda). In some ways, the OCD helps - Hughes remembers details others would miss, fixates on strange things that come to mean something very important, and eventually proves that Alda's Senator is in Baldwin's CEO's pocket. I should clarify - Alec Baldwin is playing the CEO of Pan-Am, and he's basically bought out Maine's Senator, Ralph Owen Brewster (Alan Alda) so that he can seize control of the air.

It's very tense, and it's all set on the backdrop of a serious break from reality on Hughes' part where he secludes himself in his private theater, naked and alone, peeing in jars and babbling nonsensically while simultaneously trying to get the infamous Spruce Goose (an enormous wooden cargo/troop plane he was designing) to fly.

Spoilers, Pan-Am failed to make themselves the sole international carrier for the US, the Spruce Goose flew, and Howard Hughes totally lost his marbles.

But he was awesome as he did it.

I liked that the film was honest about how messed up the OCD made Hughes - compulsive handwashing, compulsive verbal repetition, detail-oriented obsession, and pathological rituals all control his life and alienate everyone he tries to love. He's a hard man to get along with - almost impossible - but he tries very hard to do everything right. Which is also a symptom of his OCD...

They also work with the fact that Howard Hughes, having been among aircraft and machinery for the bulk of his life, was very hard of hearing, which had plot significance several times, including (even as a joke) during his hearings in the Senate.

Alda is literally about ten feet away and Hughes cannot hear him without the headset.
Even with the headset, there are times he cannot hear properly.

All in all, if you like aircraft, history, Howard Hughes, Katherine Hepburn, good acting, and good cinematography, you should absolutely watch this movie.

It's well worth it!

Now, Go Enjoy Something!

FC