****/****
Image A Sound A- Extras B
starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale, John C.
Reilly
screenplay by John Logan
directed by Martin Scorsese
by Walter
Chaw About a third of the way into Martin Scorsese's fabulous The
Aviator, a young Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio), with
ingénue Jean Harlow (Gwen Stefani) on his arm, attends the premiere of
his lavish WWI epic Hell's Angels (1930)--a picture
that burned a significant portion of Hughes's millions before becoming a
smash, and one that still contains some of the most daring, astonishing
aerial sequences ever shot for a motion picture. As paparazzi throng,
smothering Hughes with flashbulbs and red carpet questions, he looks
dazzled, confused: a consequence of his deafness in some part, sure,
but also, I'd suggest, a clue into this idea of Scorsese's--which he's
had since at least Taxi Driver--that film is a
waking dream, a kind of bad yet thrilling hallucinogenic dope trip;
this Howard Hughes is a sleepwalker who is, at this moment, struggling
to stay asleep. Later, Hughes takes his lover Katharine Hepburn (Cate
Blanchett) up in his airplane where they cruise the sky above the
Hollywood hills and share a (gulp) bottle of milk. (No small step for
the pathologically germophobic Hughes.) The source for Hughes's mental
illness is traced to a haunted opening scene where as a child he is
bathed by his mother (comparable in repressed eroticism to the
notorious bathtub sequence in Jonathan Glazer's Birth)
and warned that the world outside can only hold for him the promise of
abandonment and mortal contamination.
Continue reading "The Aviator (2004) [Two-Disc Widescreen Edition] - DVD" »


Recent Comments