Reviewed by Peter Veugelaers © 2005
- See it or die!

 Following the strong Gangs of New York director Martin Scorcese takes on another ambitious, heavily budgeted epic with The Aviator, a classy, sumptuous and somewhat intimate bio-pic of billionaire Howard Hughes. Scorcese is in top form; Gangs of New York again proved his eye for detail and character and The Aviator is one-up on that movie. If Gangs suffered from inconsequentiality then Aviator lifts a sense of profundity from the central characterisation of Hughes, putting this into top gear.  

 Street violence and aggression has always been central to Scorcese’s stories and themes, from Mean Streets and Taxi Driver to Raging Bull and Goodfellas. For a bio-pic that departs from Scorcese’s usually violent subject matter, surprisingly Hughes is captured with a similar ambiguity that framed Scorcese’s previous hoodlum characters. Hughes is depicted as a fallen angel, not necessarily good or bad, maybe a victim of his childhood. Most intriguing on second looks is the inclusion of a childhood episode. Scorsese is an articulate filmmaker who manages to create maelstrom from Hughes’s obsessive compulsive disorder and his other preoccupations – business, movies and women – concocting a potent cocktail in an almost perfectly stylised form.

 Set before and during the Golden Era of Hollywood, the movie begins with Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio) making a movie that started production in 1927 – Hell’s Angels – one of his many obsessions evident in his fastidious perfectionism to production. There are neatly edited episodes and slices in The Aviator: it begins with the making of Hell’s Angels, changing gear with his romance with Katharine Hepburn. Cate Blanchett uncannily gets Hepburn’s vocal range to a tee – she is astonishing. The follow through accomplishes an entertaining view of Hughes’s business endeavours in creating world class machines from his aviation company, TWA. Scorcese conveys that Hughes’s obsession with planes is similarly captivating as his attentiveness to women – they are all curves – particularly Hepburn, and who includes Jean Harlow (Gwen Stefani in one scene as Hughes’s date at a movie premiere) and Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsadle). This appears superficial; we are not left with a one-dimensional portrayal of character though.

 One of the strongest points of The Aviator is Scorcese’s compassion and sympathy for Hughes, creating a complex role which DiCaprio, who gets his most demanding role to date, carries convincingly. Of the supporting players, Blanchett as Hepburn is the only character who offers a genuinely open and sympathetic point of view towards Hughes when a corrupt senator (Alan Alda) and a bully business competitor (Alec Baldwin) resonant pressure. She convincingly expresses the humour and the compassion of Katharine Hepburn. The childhood scene is deftly ambiguous and charged adding a layer of emotional identification with Hughes. At times the editing and direction communicate Hughes’s state of mind with up most artistry: note the dinner table scene at the Hepburn estate with its brilliantly edited claustrophobic effect and the entanglement of the interior of Hughes’s room during a reclusive episode.