The Aviator
I sure hope Martin Scorsese gets over his fascination with Leonardo Dicaprio soon. I mean, he’s good and all but I never seem to be able to forget that I’m watching Leo and not a character in the film. Maybe this is my fault but his baby face still gets between me and whatever I’m watching.
Anyways, The Aviator is a good movie but not as thrilling and exciting as I know it could have been. Hughes is a great character and neither his enthusiasm for flying nor his lunacy moved me as they should have. There are a couple of intense scenes about his phobias that work really well. One in which he’s in a public bathroom and afraid to touch the doorknob so he can exit is really unnerving. It’s not something most of us would ever even think about but it brings Hughes to a frightening stop and nothing else matters.
Cate Blanchett IS Katherine Hepburn. It’s fucking creepy, I swear. I was never a big fan of Hepburn’s and Blanchett perfectly encapsulates everything I hate about her. It’s a startling performance. I was aware that I was watching someone impersonate her but reacting emotionally to the character. The sequence in which Hughes goes to Connecticut to meet her family is pure gold. I wanted to stand up and cheer when it was over. Brilliant.
As Hughes deteriorates, his emotional connection with both Hepburn and Ava Gardner, who both care deeply about him, seem to be the only things that can break through his psychosis and move him. The door to the screening room in shich he lived for several months becomes a kind of confessional with those he loves and a barrier against people he loathes. (Unfortunately, the film gives the audience no idea how long Hughes stayed in this one room. If I remember correctly, it was over a year.)
Hughes is a perfect subject for a film and, it might seem, Scorsese. This story has everything, almost literally! I wish it was better. Scorsese is firing on all six cylinders here and his technique is thrilling and fun. The film is stuningly beautiful to look at. The CGI is great, seamless and never a distraction, which would be disastrous in a movie like this. Something is missing, though. Still, I’d see it again.
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