In some ways, he was the man who wasn’t there. While Martin Scorsese’s “The Aviator” is about Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio), the film – despite its sumptuous production values, a jazzy visual style and solid acting – does little to capture the person behind the larger-than-life tycoon.
Although there is an early scene that is used to explain Hughes’ people phobia, the story for the most part covers his life from the ’20s through the late ’40s. In that time the son of a wealthy Texas businessman turned his inheritance into an aviation empire and tried to conquer Hollywood by financing and directing the aerial World War I extravaganza “Hell’s Angels” (1930), which took up three years of his life and millions of dollars (an astronomical sum for a film then).
Along the way, Hughes had romances with the likes of Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett) and Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale); seemingly played out his fixation with women’s breasts in his only other directorial effort, “The Outlaw” (1943), with Jane Russell and her ample figure; built the largest plane ever to fly, the Spruce Goose, which had a somewhat bosomy design; and faced off against rivals like Pan Am, headed by Juan Trippe (Alec Baldwin) and a congressional probe headed by Sen. Ralph Owen Brewster (Alan Alda).
We also see Hughes careening between recklessness, such as when he tested and crashed an experimental plane in one spectacular scene, and being paralyzed with fear, as when he is shown locked up in his screening room naked.
All this makes for colorful detail. It’s a bit odd at first listening to her as Hepburn, but Blanchett comes off credibly as the great actress – and, more than that, adds some spark to the proceedings. Beckinsale, who has been doing action flicks of late, brings a toughness you might might not expect from her.
Performances by Alda, Baldwin, John C. Reilly and Ian Holm give the film the requisite gravity needed for a biopic.
DiCaprio is problematic. Hardly just a pretty boy, DiCaprio long ago established his acting credentials. Good as he is, though, he doesn’t seem to have the weight.
By the late ’50s, Hughes began his long retreat from the world, eventually becoming a recluse in Las Vegas. So as much as DiCaprio, who pushed for the film, wanted to bring the eccentric millionaire to life, the phobias, obsessions and grand experiments form more of a fascinating mosaic than a coherent picture.
After the real Hughes died, Melvin Dummar claimed that in 1968 he picked up the tycoon as a hitchhiker. Dummar then claimed that Hughes had given him a portion of his estate, producing a written paper to prove it. Courts rejected the claim, but it did inspire the whimsical movie “Melvin and Howard.” The two might make for an interesting double bill.
“The Aviator’s” extras include a commentary by Scorsese, film editor Thelma Schoonmaker and producer Michael Mann on the first disc. Scorsese, always interesting to listen to simply because of his extensive film knowledge, does most of the talking. The second disc is crammed with interesting stuff – both about the movie and Hughes.
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