The Aviator, Martin Scorsese’s twenty-ninth feature film and second biopic, stars Leonardo DiCaprio as brash visionary Howard Hughes. Though ending well before Hughes’ ignoble end, the film depicts nearly all aspects of the billionaire’s life: as a filmmaker, as an avionics mastermind, and as a world-class kickboxer. Hughes’ obsessive-compulsive behavior, though debilitating, made for a truly manic life. Before the age of thirty-five he’d completed the trifecta of testing and crashing a plane he’d designed, romancing Katherine Hepburn, and defeating Frank Dux in the bloody Kumite. And this is only the beginning.
But one can’t speak of the film without discussing the use of colour. The hues and saturation change to suit each decade. Even Hughes’ mood has its effect on the colour scheme: he’s surrounded in crimson and grey while convalescing after a brutal crash, and resplendent in fuchsia and aubergine during an ill-fated May-December romance with fellow billionaire William Randolph Hearst. As Hearst himself, Scorsese makes his largest and boldest cameo to date, his frontal nude scene surely what secured the film’s R rating. (If you thought the eyebrows were crazy, watch out for the shag carpeting downstairs.)
Certainly the film’s most harrowing scene is the plane crash that nearly ends Hughes’s life. The billionaire’s ribs are shattered, his collarbone is crushed, and his skull is fractured. While no normal man could rebound, Hughes, imbued with an indomitable spirit and encyclopedic knowledge of engineering and metal craft, rebuilds the broken pieces of his body. He is presented on stage at a gala as the world’s first functional cyborg. Scorcese chooses to go on this high note, but any Hughes scholar knows that only tragedy follows. At the end of his life, the cybernetic parts take control over the flesh and blood man and Hughes is left alienated: a prisoner in his own body. While this lowlight is left out, one must admit that the biopic is a fair one. Every facet of Howard Hughes—the aviator, the lover, the filmmaker, the martial artist, and the cyborg—is shown unflinchingly, flaws intact.
But one can’t speak of the film without discussing the use of colour. The hues and saturation change to suit each decade. Even Hughes’ mood has its effect on the colour scheme: he’s surrounded in crimson and grey while convalescing after a brutal crash, and resplendent in fuchsia and aubergine during an ill-fated May-December romance with fellow billionaire William Randolph Hearst. As Hearst himself, Scorsese makes his largest and boldest cameo to date, his frontal nude scene surely what secured the film’s R rating. (If you thought the eyebrows were crazy, watch out for the shag carpeting downstairs.)
Certainly the film’s most harrowing scene is the plane crash that nearly ends Hughes’s life. The billionaire’s ribs are shattered, his collarbone is crushed, and his skull is fractured. While no normal man could rebound, Hughes, imbued with an indomitable spirit and encyclopedic knowledge of engineering and metal craft, rebuilds the broken pieces of his body. He is presented on stage at a gala as the world’s first functional cyborg. Scorcese chooses to go on this high note, but any Hughes scholar knows that only tragedy follows. At the end of his life, the cybernetic parts take control over the flesh and blood man and Hughes is left alienated: a prisoner in his own body. While this lowlight is left out, one must admit that the biopic is a fair one. Every facet of Howard Hughes—the aviator, the lover, the filmmaker, the martial artist, and the cyborg—is shown unflinchingly, flaws intact.
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