The Aviator
Goddamn that was a good movie. Leonardo DiCaprio can really act when he wants to.
Usually, watching stars like DiCaprio play real people I have a hard time suspending disbelief. For about the first 20 minutes it was Leonardo DiCaprio with a weird accent playing Howard Hughes — it was, in fact, quite annoying — and then, suddenly, he was Howard Hughes. And for the rest of movie he stayed Hughes.
DiCaprio carried the whole movie (all of it) although he had a little help from Cate Blanchett, who played Katharine Hepburn. Blanchett's portrayal of Hepburn didn't quite work for me — I'm not sure why. The accent was a bit over-thought (it reminded me of Emma Thompson as the nurse in Angels in America) and the voice wasn't as gravelly as I remember. Still, though, Blanchett managed to act the part of an actor who was always acting and still come through as something much more than a cardboard cut out. The casting of Frances Conroy (the mother from Six Feet Under) as Hepburn's mother was spot-on. Watching The Life Aquatic the other day all I couldn't help but notice that Blanchett looked a lot like Conroy. The lunch scene at Hepburn's parents estate was hilarious and all-to-familiar. Replace Roosevelt with Reagan and you'd have dinner at my grandparents'.
The best scenes in The Aviator are when DiCaprio interacts with Blanchett, or with Kate Beckinsale, as Ava Gardner, whose understated portrayal and subtle accent come as a welcome relief.
The manic relationship between Hughes and Hepburn is fascinating. "We are not like other people. They wouldn't understand us," Hepburn warns about the coming press storm. She is jealous of the attention he gets, of the starlets he entertains, and he is threatened by her intelligence. When she leaves him for Spencer Tracy (whose stormy relationship with Hepburn deserves a well-made movie of its own), he screams "You're just an actress. I can get any actress I want." (quotes from memory — almost certainly not exact). Yet later he blackmails and bribes a reporter to keep scandalous photos of Hepburn and the married Tracy out of the press, and when Hughes has locked himself in his projection room for weeks (months?) Hepburn returns, unsuccessfully, to try to lure him out.
The film's portrayal of Hughes' relationship with Ava Gardner is also quite interesting. Beckinsale's Gardner is one-dimensional, but at least she's a grownup. "I won't be bought," she says when he tries to give her a necklace, "but you can buy me dinner." (same caveat about quotations). Beckinsale is mostly a foil to allow DiCaprio to descend into madness. Hughes bugs her house and telephone and even hits her onscreen (she hits back, thank god), but it is Gardner who cleans Hughes up after descends into madness.
If it weren't for the fact that these two wonderful women managed to love Hughes we wouldn't have any reason to like him at all. He'd just be another rich geek with OCD.
The movie did have its disappointments. The scenes before Congress stretched way too long (and even those had obviously been split up), although Alan Alda was pretty good as a corrupt senator. The worst thing, though, was the awful CG. It was really bad — almost Stargate bad — in cases. It really ruined a couple of flight scenes for me. This was a big movie — big stars, big director, big writer, big practical effects — would it have killed them to spring for big CG, too?
I don't know how much liberty they had to take with the story, but it was a damn good one.