 Martin Scorsese's The Aviator , starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes, receives the film-as-art reviews from critics, many of them focusing on the film's subtleties (or lack of them) and giving short shrift to its overall entertainment merits. Most of the reviewers complain that the film gives little insight into the man who died in 1976 in a Las Vegas hotel penthouse where he refused to cut his hair or nails and urinated into milk bottles. Writes Glenn Whipp in the Los Angeles Daily News: "Dramatizing Hughes' enthusiasms is easy, particularly for a man of passion like Scorsese. Finding the tension in a guy being afraid to touch a doorknob -- that's a problem, and the solution eludes the filmmakers." Manohla Dargis in the New York Times concludes that Scorsese "has compromised his dark gifts for commercial palatability. He lavishes attention on the surfaces of Hughes's life - the glossy women, the gleaming planes -- an approach that shows a director overly willing to attend to the surface of his talent instead of its depths." On the other hand, Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times finds much to praise about the film. "Though what he does is invariably exquisite from a craft point of view, Scorsese has often had a tendency to be show-offy, to be there solely to please himself and overawe others," he observes. "But in Aviator he's put all his technique, energy and style at the service of a story we can't look away from, at least initially." Mike Clark in USA Today praises Scorsese and DiCaprio equally, writing about the actor, "A magnificent DiCaprio fully captures Hughes' drive and intensity yet also makes you see how, before he went fully over the brink, someone so impossible was also genuinely liked by so many." Liam Lacey in the Toronto Globe and Mail takes the middle ground. "This film is neither the worst nor near the top of Scorsese's oeuvre," he writes, "but its subject gives the director opportunity to play on familiar ground, visiting the golden age of show business." |
