THE DARKEST GLOWING: In Defense of The Aviator

Martin Scorsese has been having a hard time from critics for the last decade or so. Sure, they’re often kind to his films, but seem unable to recognize the true quality of his work post-Good Fellas. It seems as if every review from a Martin Scorsese movie after that urban masterpiece contains at some point the words: “not Scorsese’s best”. In other words, not as good as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Last Temptaion of Christ and Good Fellas. After the Gangs of New York oscar debacle of 2003, audiences seem to be on that same attitude. A little surfin through the Internet Movie Database can give you a hint of the perception some members of the moviegoing public have on the “new” Scorsese. “A sell-out”, “a has been”, “a gun for hire”, “an oscar baiter”, and so on. Others complain of his recently formed actor-director collaboration with Leonardo diCaprio. Some people in this world will probably never accept the fact that diCaprio is actually an actor. The critics, on the other side, seem to be nostalgic of the old “microfilmmaker who told small stories about complex and off beat individuals, now changed into a macrofilmmaker concerned with the workings of big societies and environments” (i read this quote from somewhere on the internet but franky don’t remember where). Undenniably, his work has become BIG. Every movie he’s made since Good Fellas (and including it, maybe with the exception of Cape Fear) pays as much attention to the main characters as to the environment in which these characters live. Even Kundun, a mostly spiritual journey through the eyes of the Dalai-Lama, has “external” aspects that call attention to themselves. This may be the cause critics are not “getting it”. The movies are so big, audiences and critics tend to associate the glamorous aspects of them with a lack of substance. But for Scorsese, without substance there’s no movie, and it’s shocking to see how many critics fail to notice the amount of organic data that flows through his big movies concerning the characters psyche and internal life. At first glance, The Aviator is nothing but Scorsese’s take on the “big old hollywood movie”, a not too personal project that wasn’t developed by him and which came to his interest only after Michael Mann and Leonardo diCaprio offered it to him. Before reading John Logan’s screenplay for the film, he didn’t even knew, or was too interested in knowing much about Howard Hughes, but something about THIS character, in THIS screenplay, surely got his attention. Critics and audiences are still talking about how they miss the Martin Scorsese from Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, but after looking at The Aviator closer and closer, those three movies are really not that different. In fact, The Aviator has a political undertone that those other two didn’t even have, so it may be a richer picture in matters of content and ground covered.
The first time I saw The Aviator, I loved it for what it was in the photogram. The flawless performances, the colorful cinematography, the glowing production design and costumes. I mean the whole package. It seemed like a well done character study, made in big proportions, but I remember asking my girlfriend on the way out: “what was this movie about?” The easy answer is Howard Hughes, and that’s not the answer I was looking for. To know about Howard Hughes’s life, you can read a book or an article. I mean if the movie was just about Howard Hughes, it was very well done and all, but to truly be great, a movie has to be about something. It has to talk about something else. Otherwise, either the film is just an excuse to talk about Howard Hughes or Howard Hughes is just an excuse to make a big movie with a lot of top notch talent involved. Even a mediocre film like A Beautiful Mind IS about something else than the main character (it’s about love, you know...) so the notion that Martin Scorsese had made a film about just Howard Hughes seemed to be unlikely, specially considering how difficult it would be for one movie to cover every aspect of Hughes’s life. However, that didn’t stopped the critics from calling The Aviator a great film, “if slightly superficial”, or even worse, “shallow”. I went to see it again if only to enjoy the cinematic quality of it, and I liked it even more, I went back a third, and then a fourth time, and each new viewing enriched and enlightened my judgement of the film.

Like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and even King of Comedy, The Aviator is mostly a completely subjective experience, told from the point of view of the main character even in the way the camera moves, the colors used, the words spoken. We see this world, the Hollywood world, the aviaton world, through the eyes of the Howard Hughes portrayed in this film. Everyone can tell you what fact of Hughes’s life is absent from this movie, how many inacuracies are on Hepburn’s portrayal, that this never happened, or that this happened before that other thing. Scorsese and Logan know better than this, and understand that the best way to approach a biopic like this one is to be faithful to the essence of the character. Paul Schrader said that is easiest to make a biopic when the character is relatively unknown (like Jacke LaMotta), cause it frees the filmmakers to concentrate on getting to the core of the character instead of the chronological order of events or stuff like that. In The Aviator, the events in Hughes’s life serves as pieces to illustrate the character’s personality, and the movie itself, in the way it is made, shows that same personality too.
The Aviator is a film like Howard Hughes would have made it. He would have cast the biggest stars, used the best technicians, and would have been grandiose, long, and glowing. It would have been clean. Scorsese and cinematographer Robert Richardson take this to every level they can think of. A lot of the scenes begin with the character (Hughes, Juan Trippe, a plane even) in the exact center of the screen. This is sometimes a homage to Citizen Kane, but it’s also a visual expression of the main character’s obsession with perfection. Scorsese has done this type of shot before (I remember one in Casino), but here he does it all the time. It becomes one of the characteristics of the picture. It is also a fast movie which seems to never get enough of anything. It feels, literaly, as if you’re flying and looking at everything from the sky. It tries to cover all sorts of aspects of the “big old Hollywood” movie. It has romance, a flawed hero, a couple of sort of villains, and a battle between the main character and those villains. There’s also an intended slapstick 30’s comedy quality to the early scenes between Hepburn and Hughes. It’s like if Scorsese were reminding you all through the film that you’re watching a MOVIE. He does that too, by changing the cinematography depending on the year the story is supposedly taking place. All these things make the movie feel old and new at the same time, in a weird, almost subversive way.

Since Hughes lived in an idealized world, that is exactly what we see on the screen. It’s not a film about the dark side of Hollywood, but about the glamour. However, the darker aspects of Hughes are necessary to the film, because that’s actually what gives the film it’s deeper meaning. Howard Hughes is almost like a God. Or at least that’s the way he’s portrayed on this particular film. Not a hero, but a near God. He’s a super human in the sense he’s not bounded by money, so he’s free to do whatever he feels like and accomplish anything that comes to his mind by just asking the right people. He wants to make movies, and makes, them. He wants to build planes, and builds them. He wants women, and he gets them by dozens. The word “impossible” means nothing to him. This is good and bad. One of the great things about Scorsese’s movies is that he never forces anything on you. He doesn’t even try to make the characters sympathetic. When a journalist asked him why should the audience care for a nasty and almost heartless individual like Jacke LaMotta, Scorsese’s answer was: “cause he’s human”. Coming from this place, is no surprise that the Howard Hughes of The Aviator is both likeable and unlikeable. He can do anything and does it, and it’s not always pretty. We see him build his planes and make his movies, and also brive senators, fire people for no reason and threat a journalist to publicly call him a communist when he refuses to kill the Hepburn-Tracy story on his magazzine. Under this cover, there’s an indictment on capitalism and the american dream. This is the kind of character that is only possible in America. A guy with no economic boundaries, and therefore, pretty much no boundaries at all.
This is a guy who will not stop. In every scene he’s doing two or three things at the same time. Hitting on a girl, talking on the phone about planes, checking some blueprints, confronting the censors of movies, editing a movie, desiging some bra. Hughes is shown as a brilliant man who’s obsession with perfection is a double-edged sword. This is brilliant touch, cause the character’s obsesive compulsive disorder is not tackled as an independent facet of his “normal” personality, but as a consequence of it. He’s so obssesive with everything that it ultimately becomes his downfall. That “i will never stop attitude” finnally translates into dementia. And at the same time, that “i will never stop attitude” is shown as a characteristic of a typically capitalist mentality. On the surface, all the battles he fights during the movie (the censors, the women, Pan Am, the Senate, the planes, the money) are about “the thing”, but they’re actually about himself. He’s the one who’s never satisfied and never will be. On Scorsese’s terms, this is greed. He’s dealt with greed and how it means people downfall before, specially in Casino.

The final scenes are specially haunting. Everything seems to be right in the world and then, suddenly, in the middle of a sentence about jet technology, Hughes gets stucked on the line “the way of the future”, and can’t seem to stop. They lock him in a bathroom (a dirty bathroom) and he starts to repeat this line over and over until a flashback to his childhood appears behind him, with his mother giving him a bath (something that both Hepburn and Gardner do to him at some point of the film), and he says: “When I grow up, I’ll build the biggest airplanes and be the richest man in the whole world”, or something along those lines. This puts everything else into perspective, since Hughes achievements are reduced to nothing but childish fantasies. It’s like if the fact he who could actually do whatever he ever wanted damaged him to the point of turning him into an unstoppable big child ruled by his wantings and unable to restraint. And then, his face alone, looking at the mirror, repeats again the line “the way of the future”. This is a fantastic ending from every perspective, cause it has so much layers to be read upon. It’s Hughes realizing what’s ahead of him, realizing that it will never be enough, that he’s been going since childhood to that dreadful point. Also, in Scorsese’s words: “It means the future of our country, of the world even”. A world in which everything is not going to be enough, in which there will be no stopping, and greed rules over everything else.
And what is our relationship to Hughes? This could be answered with other questions. What would have been of us if we found ourselves on his privileged position? Would we have enough? Are those two forces (the reckless ambition to achieve something and the boundaries, internal and external, that we have) fighting within each one of us? The Aviator is a film that makes you look inside yourself, and it’s nothing but a triumph for Scorsese. It’s a triumph of both style and substance, in which both merge organically and serve the story. It’s a triumph of acting excellence: DiCaprio, let me tell you, it’s a revelation. This is an extremely detailed and thought out performance. You see hints of Hughes’s ticks very early on in the picture, when he’s far from sick. Cate Blanchett has been accused of portraying a caricature, but I have to disagree. I haven’t seen much of the real Hepburn, but the Hepburn on this film seemed like real human being to me, on her last scenes, specially. Alan Alda shines as Brewster. Any other actor would have played this character on the typical antagonist, serious way. And Alda comes and brings a sort of comic energy to it that elevates those scenes wonderfully on the entertainment level alone. Everyone in the cast is pretty much perfect, in my opinion.

It is kind of a personal project for Scorsese after all, cause there are some similiarities between him and the character. He’s also a perfectionist, he’s kind of tireless, he feels like an outsider on the Hollywood system, and in the end, has been fighting with his own economic boundaries to make his dreams come true. Scorsese, along with his collaborators, makes this huge movie a lonely and intimate experience for the main character, not unlike Travis Bickle and Jacke LaMotta. Check out the way they’re able to comunicate without one word spoken the anguish of Hughes when he’s washing his hands and can’t get out of the bathroom until someone else gets in. Every scene helps to illustrate the character’s portrait. You feel his discomfort at the dinner with Errol Flyn, and his suffering at the Hepburn’s mansion, and understand that giving a sip of milk for him is a romantic gesture. You sense Hughes only truly happy when he’s flying, and those breathtaking aerial sequences are there only to serve that porpouse in the end.

That the film runs three hours and feels actually like two, that achieves perfection in pretty much every aspect of it’s making, that even a new endeavour (for Scorsese) as a complicated action special effects sequence comes out so seemingly effortlessy good, and that it actually opens a window into the main character’s escence, while talking about the human condition and the american dream, it’s for me, a monumental achievement. That’s why I picked it over other great films I’ve seen this year as Eternal Sunshine and Collateral. The Aviator really has nothing to ask for the “old” Scorsese movies, and I would say that, because of it’s budget and presentation, it’s even more subversive, passing as entertainment for the masses and at moments, as a celebration of Howard Hughes, while delivering such a charge of powerful messages. It’s the darkest glowing Hollywood movie I’ve probably ever seen.