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Remembered today as the eccentric billionaire who became a mysterious recluse, not many know the full story of the aviator-industrialist Howard Hughes. Neither do they know of his love to take risks be it in business or while piloting his planes. The Aviator sets out to set the record right and in doing so director Martin Scorcese provides a rounded picture of the daredevil young man who started life at the top because he inherited the family fortune and became a name to reckon with both in Hollywood and the aviation world. When Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio) made Hell’s Angels, about aeroplanes, he not only racked the largest feature film budget in history but he himself performed some of those outrageous aerial stunts. He soon bought over TWA and had plans of building the largest plane in the world, the flying boat known as the Hercules. Hughes was also a big name in Hollywood with actresses virtually falling at his feet. His interludes with Kathy Hepburn (Cate Blanchet) and the lovely Ava Gardner (Kate Bekinsale) are given due footage here but so are his idiosyncrancies and his bout with OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) which finally forced him to end his days as a recluse. It is a vast canvass and we run through a plethora of personalities like Pan Americana’s visionary head Juan Trippe (Alec Baldwin), his life-long right-hand man Noah Dietrich (John C. Reilly), Senator Owen Brewster (Alan Alda) and even the flamboyant actor Errol Flynn (Jude Law) apart from Hepburn and Gardner. John Gladiator Logan’s screenplay is well researched and tries to highlight the genius of the man but it also records his basic arrogance that comes out of owning wealth. It is an unlikely subject for director Scorcese but may be he wanted to have a dig at the hollowness of Hollywood of that age. Kathy Hepburn comes off rather poorly and Errol Flynn more like punch-happy John Wayne but Ava Garnder shows some grit in an otherwise empty circus in which the movie moguls like Louis Mayer are more like wimps. Maybe Scorcese hitting out at the Studio system But the accent is on Hughes and though one cannot with any honesty say the fare is totally gripping it has its moments. Coming as it does along with Ray, it is a complete contrast. While Ray is a fight against blindness and for survival, this is just the opposite, a supernormal person with money to burn. While Ray is a Black, Hughes is White and after starting at the top there only one direction to movedownwards. But it is the encapsulating of this mythical figure is that is primarily on the anvil and Scorcese, being Scorcese, one can depend on an authentic picture of the man. DiCaprio does an excellent job as he gets under the skin of Hughes but his boyish face is a bit of a handicap. There are good cameos by John C. Reilly and Kate Beckinsale but Cate Blanchet is too one-dimensional for comfort and able though Alan Alda may be it is hardly a role that warrants an Oscar nomination. These pluses and minuses apart, The Aviator is worth taking a look at but only after you have seen Ray.
Ray of inspiration
WHEN singer-pianist Ray Charles died last year he left behind a legacy of music that is unlikely to be surpassed as he incorporated a myriad of music styles, from jazz to rhythm and blues (R&B) to rock ‘n’ roll, gospel and country and Western. Considering he was Black and became blind as a child his achievement was phenomenal. Taylor Hackford brings all this vividly and throbbingly to life in Ray which probes the highs and lows of the man, his drug addiction and the women in his life and you have a true-life figure, warts et al, set against the background of the music of the times. Born Ray Charles Robinson (he dropped the Robinson not to be mixed with the then famous middle-weight boxing champion Sugar Ray Robinson), in Northern Florida he travelled by bus to Seattle to follow his passion for music. "Remember you are blind, but you are not stupid", his mother Aretha (Regina King) told him and it is through her that Ray learned to stand up to the world, make his choices and sink himself totally into music so that he could evolve his own brand of music, essentially soul but an amalgam of many strains that made it so distinctive and popular. Gospel was never supposed to be mixed with jazz because it was considered God versus the devil but Ray did it after initial opposition and right through his career Ray (Jamie Foxx) showed that he was daring enough to tread his own path in the music world and in life itself. Though married to Della Bea (Kerry Washington), he had a long-standing affair with his on-the-road singer Margie Hendricks (Regina King). Then there was his addiction to drugs and it was a thistle-strewn path he had to thread but not without the riches and fame that came with them. It was the 1950s and 1960s that are so gloriously recaptured, the Buicks and the Chevrolets and it is a ride down memory lane with old favourites like Bye, Bye Love,? Georgia on my Mind and Hit the Road, Jack and a scoreful of other tunes sure to warm the cockles of some old hearts. Right through, Jamie Foxx plays the blind Ray Charles with an amalgam of elan and gusto to get under the skin of the man so that at no time do we feel we are not seeing the real musician. It is a fantastic performance which could well earn him an Oscar but the fact that they have recently honoured the blacks (Denzel Washington and Halle Berry and Sidney Poitier) may go against him. It is a 160-minute film but there is never a dull moment as Ray Charles charters his own course in life, his many managers and fellow musicians including the Quincy Jones. The script by Hackford and James L. White is awesome and manages to chose the right incidents. Then the incident in which his brother George died of drowning is emphatically captured as is its impact on the singer in his latter years. Known as the "genius of soul," Ray’s success also brings into focus the talent of the Blacks and how though they are born with music in their veins they have to fight every inch to make it big in an essentially White world. So Ray is quite a masterpiece. It is more than a mere movie, it is a slice of life and not a very palatable one at that, because the truth is often hard to digest. |
