The Aviator-Theater

The Aviator, Dir. Martin Scorsese

Supposedly this is the "Movie of the Year". Supposedly the Academy will swoon over this film. The Academy is slipping. They better change their ways before they become the baseball Michael Jordan of the film world (i.e. not all that). Any group of people who gives Best Picture awards to a sappy film like Seabiscuit is losing their collective edge, not to mention their powers of cognition. Anyway, on to the film.

One thing this film has going for it is its special effects. And that's about all. The rest is over-produced, over-directed, and certainly over-acted. Subtlety has apparently been erased from Scorsese's directorial vocabulary. From the very beginning of the film, it seems as though we are in some alternate universe in which everyone in California is on LSD (particularly the band at the Coconut Grove). Everyone moves big, talks big, wears big clothes, and even the flash bulbs get their own special effects. Oddly enough, the only time this cartoonish atmosphere subsides a smidge is when Mr. Hughes is at his lowest point, as if Scorsese is taking a moment of quiet to reflect on the tragedy.

Cate Blanchette is a perennial favorite of mine, and did a fine job (but not a fantastic one) playing Kate Hepburn. Her entrance in the film felt more like a freight train as she imitated Hepburn's distinct speaking style to the point of caricature. It settles down after a bit, but occasionally comes back up to remind us that this is someone *acting* like someone else. I hate that.

Leonardo DiCaprio is not a perennial favorite. Let me state for the record that I will never believe him as a character over the age of 25. It's just impossible for me. Aside from that, his over-acting was nearly unbearable. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that his overwrought scenes from the first minute are attributable more to the directing than Leo's shortcomings.

Speaking of which, I'm still trying to figure out what possessed Scorsese to edit this picture as he did. It seemed that every five or ten minutes, we were treated to an extreme close-up of Howard Hughes' face. That's a lot of close-ups in a movie that comes in at just under THREE hours. If I'd felt inclined to count, I could have told you how many eyelashes Leo has on each eye. Furthermore, these close-ups really lose their punch when not used judiciously. How are we supposed to know which ones are important revelations and which ones are just showing off with a camera?

This brings me to my next point. This film had so much extra crap in it that had nothing to do with the story. It should have been edited out. Period. Gwen Stefani could have been edited out also. Not that she did a bad job, mind you, but her appearance had little or nothing to do with the story. I can't help but wonder if she was thrown in to help draw the young crowd. If so, it didn't work. I was the youngest person in that theater by about 20 years, and overheard a woman asking her husband if he'd worked for Hughes Aircraft in Long Beach. (He said he couldn't remember, which is ironic at best, and funny at the very least.)

My other major gripe that no one else will ever notice was the music. Howard Shore was given credit for the score, but whatever he wrote was reduced to moments of the film that had nothing to do with music, and were not enhanced by it. In my opinion, the blame for this lies with the editors, not with Shore.(Tragic, really) The rest of the music was an odd mix of big band swing and classical strings. While I like both genres of music, they were poorly employed in this film. The swing music was employed to recall the '20's and '30's, but the time frame of this film goes almost twenty years past that. But yet the music stayed the same. Juxtapose this time-challenged jazz with string music reminiscent of the 18th Century, and you get a jerky aural experience.

I did, however, find something to like in this film. The lighting in this film was interesting, yet not distracting (usually). I particularly like the few times in the film where the lighting is done in a way similar to that of stage theater, with a spot on a main character, then other lights coming up or going down upon the entrance or exit of another character. Somehow, it gave a softer touch to the poignant and significant moments of Hughes' life, contrasting sharply to the heavy-handedness that jerks the reins for the rest of the film.