Review of The Aviator (2004) by Maciej Z — 29 Apr 2013

When you have an interesting story you are half-way there with a movie like this. When you have the likes of DiCaprio and Blanchett on top of that you have all you need. When you have Scorsese in there too you are just plain showing off. This film is every bit as ambitious as Hell's Angels is portrayed as being in the movie. It gets held down by that ambition though- it almost looses its own sanity with it's questionable storyline that, despite the quite hefty running time, feels like it's only scratching the surface of the life of a fascinating character. It becomes a story of events that may have happened rather than a story of what it's like to be this man, and I think that's the story everyone really wanted to see. Nonetheless, this is a biopic that's truly captivating, exciting and interesting and while it may not reach it's full potential, there's more than enough there to hail this as a success.

DiCapro is strong here and while he can't fully shake his boyish character that's unfitting for this rule, he provides a real intensity that's not at all ridiculous (even though the DVD cover suggests otherwise.) There seems to be some restraint from him though at times and while that's perfectly fine for the film, I wonder how much it really represented the fiery character of Hughes.

Blanchett is powerful as always but it's not her best performance for me- it's almost awkward at times with it's attempt to be befitting of the setting- everything we learn from her character comes from the dialogue, her performance, while strong, doesn't teach us anything new, instead it seems to help us understand the time and capture the feeling of it and while that's admirable, her hand is somewhat overplayed in that case and I just wanted something more- there's more to Hepburn than that but it's just not on show.

The supporting cast are all strong and provide more to this film than you might at first realise- we've got Willem Dafoe here and you barely get a chance to see him, that's the kind of talent that's packed into the background here. My only grumble is that Reilly's character was a bit weak- it feels like he was short changed and I'm sure he would have been enthusiastic to develop the character had the script allowed.

Scorsese does some of his best work here I think, everything that's made him the household name he is is on display here. The style could be described as glossy but behind it there's a real texture that, while it fails to truly show itself here, it's still very much apparent and allows the film to have real substance that isn't manipulated without compromising any stylistic aspects. In addition to this, you feel a part of the setting from the get go and the spirit of the age is prevalent throughout.

The plot it scrambled and generally unconvincing. With this being a biopic the most important thing is the character and really, enough isn't said here. That's not particularly unusual but at almost three hours it's a real flaw with this one and in that sense it doesn't pay off. Another issue with the length is that it creates an unevenness here- there's some strong parts and some weak ones and while that, again, is common place in films, biopics tend to suffer from it the most and it seems that no attempt was made here to account for that- it's uncompromising and damaging as a result.

There's some life to the script though- at times it feels on the brink of depth but usually it's either just acceptable or good and with something as epic as this wishes to be, it has to be more than good at times. I understand the need to have something subtle here but it doesn't work over the heavy backdrop- the outcome is feeling that's been squeezed from the movie. Opportunity wasted in an attempt to be something special without ever giving us something truly special to consider. The closest the film comes to really pulling it off is in it's conclusion and that's just deeply frustrating. While the ending is apt, much of what came before it was unnecessary. There's no pay-off in the performance either- DiCaprio simply doesn't have time to take it where it needs to go at the conclusion, instead he has to settle for some intense scenes before hand but they turn out to be hit and miss on his part- ironically, the best hit was the scene where he actually got hit.

If I was to pick a ridiculous term to try and sum this up (because that's what fake movie critics do!) it would probably be something like graciously bloated (didn't I say it would be ridiculous?). It's long and often unrewarding but it's never punishing and for the most part it's not frustrating nor is it disappointing. It's never spectacular though- I couldn't help but think where Paul Thomas Anderson could have took something like this, how far it really could have went, what could really be achieved. All genres have their limitations though and biopics are particularly susceptible to this and the mistakes made here can be forgiven for that reason. It's a good film by any standard but how on Earth did it manage to fail to be great? (rhetorical question ending- hells yeah.).