The Aviator

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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Year:	2004
Country of origin:	USA / Germany
Director:	Martin Scorsese
Genre:	Aviation biopic
Starring:	Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale, John C. Reilly, Alec Baldwin
Rating:	5/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338751/
Tagline:	For some men, the sky was the limit. For him, it was just the beginning.
Favourite line:	"Howard, you really think they're gonna let you put out a whole movie just about tits?"

Martin Scorcese's fascinating biopic of maverick businessman Howard Hughes, a man whose vision and creativity pushed aviation into areas never previously thought possible.

The movie begins with Hughes in the directors chair, making the legendary Hell's Angels, at the time the most expensive movie ever made. Hughes's obsession with the minutest details results in multiple reshoots and, in a bid for realism, the largest number of aeroplanes that had ever been use to shoot a war movie. Additionally, just weeks prior to its release, having already spent in the region of $2 million, Hughes insists oin a full re-filimng, this time to incorporate speech as the silent movie era draws to a close.
With money no object it seems that Hughes can do precisely as he pleases.
Besides making movies, his other passion is aviation and, as major shareholder of TWA it was his dream to make transcontinental flight an everyday thing, available to all, not simply the wealthy and privileged.
His obsessive tendencies seem to drive him; he wants everything bigger, faster, sleeker, ever the perfectionist, a state of mind that would only intensify with age resulting in his ultimate withdrawal from society, paranoid, alone, afraid, refusing to leave his home theatre, collecting his own bodily waste in milk bottles.
The OCD resulted in other symptoms too: the need to wash his hands whenever he was touched by another human, the refusal to drink anything that didn't come from a sealed bottle, the verbal tic that seemed as if his mind had locked down on one particular sentence, repeating it over and over as if possessed.

The direction here is excellent, as is the cinematography, the flying scenes jaw-droppingly beautiful as Scorcese goes CGI on our asses.
The performances from all are top notch, too, particularly DiCaprio who really sinks his teeth into the role, portraying Hughes as an excitable, enigmatic man with an obsession for detail bordering on the outright insane. DiCaprio's presence made me believe that I really would not like this film. God damn it, I was wrong.
An excellent, excellent film.