CS Daily Archive > Weekend Read > 12/17/04

The Sky's the Limit

By david michael wharton

Martin Scorsese brings to life John Logan's script of the high-flying life of millionaire Howard Hughes, from the heights of fame to the pits of madness.

The Aviator

John Logan

As a youth in Texas, Howard Hughes (Leonardo Di Caprio) wanted to excel in three fields: golf, aviation, and film producing. It is the latter two that would circumscribe much of his life, and that which Martin Scorcese's sprawling biopic chooses as its focus. Not yet out of his teens, Howard inherits the Hughes Tool Company fortune and descends on Hollywood determined to produce his own war epic at a time when nobody but nobody made a picture outside of the studio system. His $3.8-million Hell's Angels makes Hughes an instant celebrity and launches a golden period of his life, which sees romances with Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett) and Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale), the launch of an unflyable plane, and a bitter turf war over the future of commercial aviation. Tragically, however, the man who conquered both the silver screen and the sky above could not conquer his own inner demons.

It is telling that John Logan's script structurally bookends Hughes' story with two thematically similar projects: the infamous Hell's Angels shoot and the construction of the even more infamous Hughes H-4 Hercules (or the "Spruce Goose" as it was nicknamed, much to Hughes' dismay). Both were massive undertakings, labeled foolhardy by naysayers, and both saw Hughes dump barrels of his own money into them. Finally, both projects defined the arc of Hughes' life, of a constant drive toward seemingly impossible goals.

The script suggests that there was more to this than simple eccentric passion and entrepreneurial drive. The pleas for fiscal reason voiced by Hughes' assistant, Noah Dietrich (John C. Reilly), fall on deaf ears because to consider them would mean taking his eyes off his goal. Logan's script shows us a Hughes who is motivated not only by fear of failure but also by the realization that if he doesn't keep himself focused, he may succumb to the creeping mental illness that would finally, tragically, render him a recluse in his later years. In the bathroom of a trendy Hollywood restaurant, Hughes scrubs his hands until they bleed, then finds himself trapped, incapable of touching the doorknob for fear of infection. Later, it progresses into a sort of fugue state, with Hughes' mind short- circuiting and locking in repetition on certain phrases: "Show me the blueprints. Show me the blueprints. Show me…" Logan deftly portrays the irony of Hughes -- a man obsessed with speed, with the freedom of flight -- brought low by a mental illness that manifests as a sort of paralyzing force. The scenes where Hughes overcomes these fears through sheer force of will, as in a confrontation with Senator Brewster (Alan Alda), are powerful but all the more tragic with the knowledge of how Hughes' story ended.

The film's primary weakness is a failure to answer how Hughes reconciled two key elements of life -- his womanizing tendencies and his phobia of germs. One would think that the particulars of sex would pose all sorts of problems to someone who can't force himself to open a bathroom door, but the script never addresses this. Indeed, Logan portrays Hughes' relationships with women, in particular Katharine Hepburn and Ava Gardner, as crucial. Hepburn is the first person to whom we see Hughes confess his fears of his shattering mind, and Gardner comes to Hughes' rescue late in the film when he must ascend from the depths of madness and defend his good name. Hughes never shows any hesitancy toward physical intimacy, and even if we don't know much about this aspect of Hughes' psychology, it would have been interesting for Logan to at least touch upon this seeming contradiction.

Coming close on the heels of Oliver Stone's spectacular misstep with Alexander, it's all the more encouraging to see Martin Scorsese knock this tale of a similarly larger-than-life figure clean out of the park. John Logan's script portrays Hughes as a complicated and driven man, and finally gives Leonardo Di Caprio the role needed to move out from under Titanic's shadow.

The Aviator
Miramax Films
Rated PG-13; 166 min.

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When not slaving away in the salt mines as assistant editor of CS Weekly, David Michael Wharton somehow finds the time to write "TV Wasteland" for Cinescape and "Son of a Pitch" for CS Weekly. He hangs his hat in Texas, where he is, of course, working on a screenplay.

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