The Aviator vs Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind

I'm just going to cut to the chase here: With The Aviator, Martin Scorsese has made another really good movie. Every time the man directs a film, we have to go through all this run-around about whether or not it's his greatest ever, or whether or not he's topped the last one, or whether or not Patrick Swayze is going to direct a movie at the last minute and steal Scorsese's Oscar. Everybody take a deep breath. Martin Scorsese is a very good director. One of the best. Maybe he's the very best. And again, he's made a good movie: The Aviator. You should see it. Maybe, when it's over, you can get online and read stuff like this, and then you can talk about it with your friends. But lay off, just a little, would you? You're welcome to watch Goodfellas whenever you want. Same goes for Pulp Fiction or Citizen Kane or Badlands. You can watch any good movie by any good director. You can sweat through Scorsese's entire catalog, over and over, and it won't change one simple truth: Martin Scorsese, who directs good movies, has directed another good movie, called The Aviator, and let's just take it on its own, okay?

The aviator of The Aviator, of course, is Howard Hughes. As the film begins, he's in the first year (of three) of filming his World War I movie Hell's Angels. It's not clear how much experience Hughes has as a director, but he was also the producer, so any time he needed extra money, he just asked himself, said yes to himself, and the budget grew and grew. Hughes was enthusiastic and hands-on; when one plane clips a camera from the top of another, Hughes simply stands up in the cockpit and films with a hand-held. Eventually, with help from his accountant/business assistant/Smithers, Noah Dietrich (John C. Reilly) and a confused, cloud-searching meteorologist named Dr. Fitz (Ian Holm), Hughes not only finishes the film (after refilming most of it with sound), but it's a rousing success. The Hell's Angels premiere is an enormous affair, with cars lining the streets, and the movie's star, Jean Harlow (Gwen Stefani), on Hughes's arm on the red carpet. The early scenes of The Aviator, on movie sets and in clubs like the Coconut Grove, embody early Hollywood perfectly. The outdoor scenes look like black and white footage that has been colorized, and the indoor party scenes are full of energy and flash in a way that is tacky in the grand Old Hollywood way, with girls on giant swings, and a big band in the corner. Leonardo DiCaprio, as Howard Hughes, finds a suitable fit to this time period. He probably doesn't bear much physical resemblance to the actual Hughes, but he embodies the time and the type (rich, stubborn, ambitious, reckless) completely. This is DiCaprio's best performance. When Hughes begins losing control of his fears, DiCaprio never shows off or goes for the big melodrama. He keeps his cool and plays everything realistically. That's not to say there aren't big moments for him in The Aviator. In a scene that seamlessly mixes drama and special effects, Howard crashes an experimental plane through homes in Beverly Hills, finding himself trapped and screaming inside a burning cockpit. Later, in one of his…down-times…Howard holes up in his screening room, naked and paranoid. During a business meeting, he shouts his answers through the door, clamping his hand over his mouth when he is unable to control the amount of times he repeats each phrase.

Prior to the release of Hell's Angels, Hughes was a smooth-talker and somewhat of a womanizer, but stuck to the cigarette girl type. After his success as a filmmaker, he was able to move up to the starlets, which he did with vigor. Besides Harlow, there was his on-again, off-again romance with a sarcastic, flirty Ava Gardner (a surprisingly good Kate Beckinsale. Man, drop the crossbow and she's not bad.) He met his match with one in particular though, Katherine Hepburn. I'm gonna need a second.

It's unfair, probably, to take an epic like The Aviator, with its impressive camera work, meticulously re-created historical scenes, and jaw-dropping stunts and spend most of my review fawning over a supporting performance. But that's what I'm going to do. Let me tell you: I am beside myself over Cate Blanchett. As Katherine Hepburn, Blanchett could have gone straight for impersonation. She could have watched old Hepburn movies, or maybe Martin Short sketches, and learned the voice and some of the mannerisms. Or, she could have just played the role straight, hoping that we wouldn't notice the differences while she saves her performance from caricature. I'm happy to tell you, she does neither. Cate Blanchett plays Katherine Hepburn much as she probably was, getting the voice and mannerisms dead-on, rocking the big trousers and red lips, while keeping her performance human, original, funny and smart. In a year that includes Jamie Foxx's amazing performance as Ray Charles, it's Cate Blanchett whom I think gives the best portrayal of a non-fiction character. You know a performance is good when the actor has the same name as her character, and hearing the name only makes you think of the character.

Hepburn's relationship with Howard Hughes happened at just the right time for both of them. She was, in her own words, “box office poison”, and he was just on the verge of stardom. Hughes was a budding hypochondriac, germaphobe, obsessive, compulsive, and schizophrenic. Throwing napkins under the table after one use, carrying his own soap, refusing to wear any shoes besides white sneakers, repeating the ends of sentences over and over. That sort of thing. While Hepburn benefited by getting positive press exposure on the arm of the charismatic filmmaker, Hughes got a little normalcy at home. He even let her drink from his milk bottle. Hepburn came closer than most in his circle to helping Hughes adjust to living in the real world. She tells him that he should be careful with fame, because it's usually the eccentrics that become famous, and usually the eccentrics who have the most trouble with it. Her life was probably better once she met Spencer Tracy, but her new relationship caused Hughes to back-peddle significantly. And by “back-peddle significantly,” I'm talking pissing in bottles and not cutting his toenails. I'm talking putting down newspapers to keep his feet from touching the carpet. I'm talking washing his hands bloody. You think his plane was big? You should check out his back-peddle. Late in the movie, DiCaprio and Blanchett have one last brief scene, with a door between them, that is heartbreaking and simple.

Mr. Scorsese, somehow, keeps The Aviator under control. He's juggling the crazy-guy stuff with the playboy stuff; the movie director with the military warplane builder; the Hepburn family dinner with the U.S. Senate hearings. It's a full movie, and it could have been a mess, but it's not. It's good.

Like Howard Hughes, Chuck Barris was a charismatic genius who wound up a prisoner to his own paranoia. Unlike Hughes, however, Barris used his talents not for non-monopolized trans-Atlantic flight, but to pave the way for America's Next Top Model and Trading Spouses. Is it too late to take back the word “genius”?

Chuck Barris (Sam Rockwell) was the brains behind such shows as The Dating Game and The Gong Show, which both somehow simultaneously humiliate and entice anyone who participates. He's the reason American Idol includes a few episodes of the worst auditions before they get to the talented contestants. Barris is a huckster, basically, but smart and good with the pitch. Exploitation TV was the right avenue for him, whether he liked it or not. And mostly, he seems not to. You get the idea he'd like more respect, but that he wouldn't necessarily be in favor of doing something more respectful to get it. Like Hughes, he finds the love of a good, weird woman. Barris's was named Penny, and is played by Drew Barrymore. Penny is one of those girls who moves from the sixties to seventies to eighties by putting on whichever persona seems the most photogenic. When she comes in at one point and says “I'm a Hippie!” she might as well have said “I bought a new jacket!” As Penny, Barrymore is so good. It's a crime this is probably her least seen performance. She's so funny and energetic and sexy she practically glows in the dark.

Ah, but Chuck Barris, you see, wasn't just a Crap-TV mastermind, or a slick game-show host. No sir. When he's not peddling mystery dates and popsicle fellatio, he's out there killing for his government. Yes, kids, believe it or not, Chuck Barris was a covert assassin, flying around the world with Dating Game winners as a chaperone, and sneaking off to shoot spies and traitors. His new life is dangerous but exciting, and he meets the mysterious Patricia, played by Julia Roberts. Patricia is also a spy, one of those movie spies that love hiding in the shadows and speaking in riddles. She and Barris have a lusty fling, and share the only Which Cup Is The Poison In? scene that has worked in about fifty years.

Eventually, of course, Barris's life catches up with him, and he freaks out, naked and desperate, with Penny outside the door, just like Hughes and Hepburn.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was directed by George Clooney, who, besides having a way with casting (Sam Rockwell is excellent as Barris), has a visual style that, while not being completely original, is snappy and moody and fun to watch. The TV stuff is all filmed in the same harsh, flat lighting that you might enjoy on, say, The Price is Right, while the spy stuff is all blues and grays. Clooney's direction is never too pretentious. He knows he has sort of a ridiculous topic, but he respects it. The script is by Charlie Kaufman, so you'd be pretty safe in just taking it as satire and enjoying the film. But what if it's true? What if, say, Regis were hired to be a contract killer by the U.S. Government, and every day at ten, he'd say goodbye to Kelly and jet off to Helsinki for some snipering and then face-licking with Julia Roberts? Is that so hard to swallow? Barris had the perfect cover, and in Rockwell's hands, it's pretty easy to conceive that this guy was just ambitious enough, at first, to take on all the duties required by his government while simultaneously loving up two fine women and churning out guilty pleasure TV.  I'm not sure if George Clooney had any Hughes-level problems in getting his film on-screen, but like Scorsese, he's made a good movie. Here's hoping, some day, we have a few more George Clooney movies to compare it to.

The Aviator: A
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind: B+