DiCaprio has complete command of Hughes. Like most people, I was first exposed to him in dumb movies like “Titanic” and “Romeo Plus Juliet.” But with “Catch Me If You Can” he really found his footing playing the boy wonder. He is genuinely grateful about everything the world gives him for his good looks and he is eager to get away with everything people will let him do because he is so boyish. It’s so interesting to watch DiCaprio trying to act tough because it’s so unconvincing. The vulnerability behind the act is easy to spot. His Hughes is not so much confident as a man putting on the show of confidence. DiCaprio’s best performances include his “pretty boy with a chip on his shoulder” attitude.
We laugh at Hughes as his obsessive-compulsion leads to weird bathroom antics, but Scorsese holds these scenes back until we’ve gotten to know him. We feel less like we’re laughing at a freak and more like we’re laughing at a friend who is how he must be. This is crucial for when Hughes’s legal battles cause his condition to turn especially dark.
DiCaprio is surrounded by a flawless and reliable cast. Ian Holm plays the European meteorologist originally brought in to make clouds for “Hell’s Angels,” who eventually becomes Hughes’s all-purpose smart-sounding foreigner. As the president of Pan American Airlines, a man who sees buying politicians as just another piece of the free market pie, Alec Baldwin cements his position as Hollywood’s number one smooth-talking sleazebag. By casting the perpetually likeable Alan Alda (Hawkeye from TV’s “MASH”) as the corrupt senator sent to bring Hughes down, a potential mustache-twisting villain is made into a moral relativist with much greater depth. John C. Reilly is Hughes’s endlessly harried accountant and right hand. Kate Beckinsale is silky and professionally mysterious as Ava Gardner, and Jude Law makes a smashing cameo as Erroll Flynn. Only Cate Blanchett, as an exaggerated Katherine Hepburn, seems to be acting, but that may be the point: maybe Hughes is drawn to her because she uses behavioural artifice to force her surroundings closer to her ideal.
One last comparison to “Citizen Kane:” for all the dark places it visits, we can tell by its tone that “The Aviator” is first and foremost an entertainment. It’s PG13 when it could so easily be R—a rarity for both Scorsese and end-of-the-year releases destined for Oscar nominations—and it stars a matinee idol, because Scorsese knows that’s how Hughes would have liked it. I want to call it the best movie of 2004, but I know there are plenty of 2004 movies that I haven’t seen yet. It’s tempting to say the only way a film this year could be better would is if it had Jesus in it, but I already saw that movie, and as much as I liked, this one’s even better.
Finished January 8th, 2005
Copyright © 2004 Friday & Saturday Night
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