December 23-29, 2004

movies

Up in the Air

fight or flight: Leonardo DiCaprio as The Aviator's compulsive innovator.

The Aviator is driven less by biography than wishful thinking.

by Cindy Fuchs

Partway through The Aviator, Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio) presses his luck during a test flight over Beverly Hills. He's so excited about the incredible speed of the XF-11, designed for use by the U.S. military, that he can't quite absorb the danger in front of him. On the radio, his designer warns him to back off, but he just can't, realizing too late that the plane is headed out of control.

The plane crashes awfully, slamming through houses and bursting into flames. A young soldier pulls Hughes from the wreck, and so he miraculously survives, though he suffers burns over 70 percent of his body, multiple broken bones, punctured organs and a smashed face. When the scene cuts from the hell of the crash to the quiet whiteness of the hospital, the harrowing is hardly over. Hughes' accountant Noah Dietrich (John C. Reilly) hovers by his bedside, bearing another warning: The U.S. has grounded his prospective fleet and Hughes Aircraft is going under. Hughes is undeterred. He decides to spend his own $7 million to finish his dearest project, the Hercules, also known as his "white elephant" or the "spruce goose" for its unheard-of hugeness, literal woodenness and sheer ridiculousness. Hughes mostly recovers from his devastating injuries. His face is patched back together and he's able to walk with a limp. But he never quite gets over the damage to his nerves, his psyche, even his soul.

From this moment on, all the tics and neuroses, paranoia and obsessive-compulsive behaviors displayed in previous scenes will come roaring back to the surface. Or so you'd think. But as retold by Martin Scorsese and screenwriter John Logan, the spectacular deterioration of Howard Hughes here takes a pause so that he can play American Hero, the mind behind TWA, fighting the evils of big business -- namely the mutual back-scratching of government and corporate powers as embodied by Pan Am's Juan Trippe (Alec Baldwin) and Maine Sen. Ralph Owen Brewster (Alan Alda).

Focused on his grandest years -- the preposterously overscaled filmmaking of Hell's Angels and The Outlaw, as well as the tremendous creativity and energy that he pours into flying machines --The Aviator portrays Hughes as a rebel and a genius, a dashing young man with ambition, hope and nerve. While the movie is often thrilling (mostly due to DiCaprio's natty incarnation), it's also encumbered by Scorsese's affection for biographically inclined epics. At their best (Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ), these films rethink personal stories in cultural and political terms. At their worst (Gangs of New York), they turn awkwardly Spielbergian, relying on camera flourishes, overproduced backdrops, and emotional shorthand instead of the deft details that make Travis Bickle and Henry Hill such brilliant, unnerving figures.

The Aviator's most egregious shorthand is its opening scene, where little Howard first appears being threatened by his mother with quarantine as she dumps on him her fear of germs and "coloreds." Ding, ding: Here's the key to his later compulsive disorder, quite stunningly rendered in one particular scene when he's frightened to leave a public restroom because he can't touch the doorknob. Howard, parlaying his father's drill-bit money into a fortune, soon becomes rich enough that others cover up for his eccentricities rather than trying to correct them. In between these scary bits (as when Hughes locks himself in his projection room, strips off his clothes, and pees into milk bottles for weeks on end), the film paints him as a daring and naive romantic -- not only in his thinking about aviation as a means to benefit humanity, but also in his appeal for one of Hollywood's most beautiful iconoclasts, Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett). Their match at first seems perfect. He invites her for a golf game, lets her pilot his plane, and thrills her with his wealthy-man's nonconformity. But when he's crushed by his inability to mix with her haughty Connecticut family and turns to meanness and obsession with his work, she leaves him for Spencer Tracy. The Aviator suggests that he never gets over this rejection, that it accelerates his descent into madness.

This is ostensibly helped by his subsequent "girlfriend" choices (whether he actually has sex with them is unclear): the independent-minded Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale) and the financially compensated 15-year-old Faith Domergue (Kelli Garner). Howard is competitive, lonely, and ever misunderstood, and he is above all unable to keep his mind in line; the film leaves open whether he might have been treated successfully for his illnesses, if only he'd found people as interested in helping him as taking his money. While his story might seem a critique of American arrogance, celebrity excess and territorial pissing, it's also a tale of personal failings and familial dysfunction. By film's end, he's left muttering repeatedly, "The way of the future, the way of the future" into the mirror, looking into his individual pain as well as imminent, infinite national privilege and corporate self-interest. That The Aviator mostly lets Hughes off the hook by positing him as a warrior against administrative corruption (see the congressional hearing where he makes the bad senator quake), the movie is eventually less about the man it depicts than the epic it wants to be.

The Aviator Directed by Martin Scorsese A Miramax release Opens Saturday at area theaters