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Nicolas Sawicky Critique of The Aviator Professor Annunziata The life of Howard Hughes is one that truly played out like a Hollywood

movie. He lived such an extraordinary life that included movie making, flying around the world, and being the fasted man alive. With all his accomplishments, they were often overshadowed by his very unique tendencies that were caused by his obsessive-compulsive disorder. It is these two fascists of his life that the film The Aviator chooses to focus most on. The Martin Scorsese film, The Aviator, does a remarkable job of telling the audience about the famed Howard Hughes. Without going through every event of his life, the film shows the audience that Hughes lived a fantasizing life of ups and downs. With the talented Leonardo DiCaprio playing Howard Hughes and a stunning performance from Kate Blanchett, the movie has an exceptional foundation of acting. It is no secret that Leonardo DiCaprio has had plenty of experience acting in large motion pictures. He takes this experience to truly immerse himself in the character of Howard Hughes. DiCaprio is able to hit the nail on the head in regards to the noticeable Texas accent of Hughes. He makes the audience believe that he is in fact Hughes, despite his contrasting physical appearance to Howard Hughes. DiCaprio is also able to master the many other traits that made up the eccentric Howard Hughes. During one occasion, DiCaprios character orders ten

 chocolate cookies, with medium sized chips, none too close to the edges. During another incident, he orders a steak with exactly 12 peas that must be in perfect symmetry and size. Dicaprios face when someone takes one his neatly organized peas was very entertaining. You feel his anger towards this obvious breach of

personal space. Even though his steak was never touched, Hughes cant take another bite and ends up leaving the restaurant to his sanctuary in the sky. Howard Hughes had an extreme fear of germs. This is a theme that very brilliantly expands throughout the film. It starts off with little quirks like touching the arm of a chair and inspecting his hands for dirt. Then it proliferates into him having to have cellophane on the wheel of his plane when he flies it. The audience eventually learns that he keeps his own bar of soap on him, frantically cleaning himself until he bleeds. In a hilarious episode, Hughes traps himself in a bathroom by using all the towels to wipe his hands and leaving nothing to open the door with. His enemies eventually learn about his germ phobia and they use this to put him at a disadvantage during the senate hearings, hoping that a crazy rampage would ensue. His madness continues its progression when he locks himself in his film room, watching movies naked with long nails. He even creates a complex system for people to deliver him milk. It is this gentle progression that makes Howard Hughes life that much more interesting to the audience. The film starts off in a seemingly normal manner. The audience is shown a young Howard Hughes being bathed by his mother. You then hear him spelling the word quarantine, thinking it is just a spelling lesson while he gets washed. You

 then get a shock when his mother continues on about germs, instilling a fear that will control him later in life. The perfectionist inside of Howard Hughes is another theme that the film portrays very strongly. This perfectionism is present very quickly when he is shooting the movie Hells Angels. He wants to war movie to be epic, so much that

he hires a meteorologist to find him clouds, so that the planes will look faster. Then when the film nears completion, he decides that silent films are a thing of the past and reshoots the whole thing with sound. In the end the movie was a success, due a lot to his constant perfection. Howard Hughes love life is another topic that is explored in the film, The Aviator. Known as the playboy of his time, Hughes had a lot of girlfriends. His most memorable is definitely Kate Heburn. She understands his eccentric tendencies and wants to help him conceal them. When she eventually falls in love with someone else, Hughes takes it very badly. He ends up burning all his clothes, including the ones he is wearing. His love life only goes down from there. He interviews a fifteen- year-old girl, putting her under contract to be his girlfriend. His final girlfriend is put under surveillance twenty-four seven. Even putting twelve bugs in her house, reading the transcripts of all her phone calls. It is this type of obsession that few girls in Hollywood could understand. The audience knows that Hepburn is the only girl that would ever be right for Hughes and yet she instead stays with a married man.

4 The editing in The Aviator is another shinning jewel that Martian Scorsese

should be proud of. The best example of this is when Howard Hughes and Kate Hepburn first meet. They begin to get intimate and Hughes starts to caresses her body. Scorsese then has the caressing motion turn to Hughes stroking the side of a new plane that has had its top wings removed and has a smooth body that makes the plane more aerodynamic. This editing technique allows the audience to understand how much Hughes cared about planes. They were like women to him; he wanted them smooth and slender. Scorseses film The Aviator was also able to demonstrate the vast amount of projects that Howard Hughes would work on at once. He was able to accomplish all the amazing things that he did because he was always doing something, never wasting any time. When he was breaking the record for how fast he could fly around the world, he was also finalizing the deal to buy the TWA airline. This fact not only amazed the audience, but also the head of Pan AM. The viewer is also show a time when he is busy working on the Hercules plane, while fighting the bill that Pan AM is pushing, producing The Outlaw, and even reworking the logo for TWAs push to world travel. These sequences allows the audience to visualize how busy Howard Hughes was, giving another reason for his eventual insanity. As the picture goes into its last act, the audience is shown the ridiculous trial that Howard Hughes is forced to attend, calling him a warmonger. The debate is centered on the giant flying ship, named Hercules. The U.S. government spent millions of dollars on it development, with it not even ever seeing flight. Scorsese

 then cuts to Howard Hughes inside a completed Hercules plane. There is a buildup as Hughes begins to attempt a take-off. The focus then goes back to the trials regarding the plane and a Hughes defense of the project. Howard then goes on to

promise that it will fly or he would leave the United States forever. At that moment, the focus is once again put on Howards attempt to fly the plane out of the bay of L.A. The audiences heart begins to pump as the plane gains speed. Scorsese adds a radio announcer describing the scene to add a feeling of being there. Eventually the plane takes off and you breathe a sigh of relief. Even after witnessing all the great things that Howard Hughes had accomplished, it felt like this one was the most important to him. The scene involving the massive Hercules would not have been possible without the use of Computer Generated Imagery. Since the only completed model of the Hercules design is sitting in a museum, CGI had to be used to recreate the giant fortress. Scorsese did an exceptional job balancing real images with CGI to recreate not only the flight of the Hercules, but many other scenes that helped the audience picture life the life and times surrounding Howard Hughes. The ending of The Aviator is also very gripping. The final scene takes place after the successful take-off of the Hercules plane. In his usually state, Hughes sees that there are improvements that need to be made, referring to jet engines. He goes on to say that they are The wave of the future. He then keeps repeating this phrase over and over again, as his two closest employees shove him into a bathroom. The film ends with a flashback to him as a child. He predicts that he will one day make

moves and fly airplanes, something that many children at that age dream about. The only difference is that Hughes accomplished both of those tasks and much more. The Aviator is truly a biographical masterpiece. It tells the gripping tale of Howard Hughes life, while also keeping the audience remarkable entertained. Martian Scorsese is able to capture the many odd quirks that made up Howard Hughes and allowed the audience to understand how they affected this great man. He was able to stay historically accurate while still creating an amazing storyline. Even though Scorsese decided to only cover a portion of his life, that portion he did cover was more than most men accomplish in a lifetime, making for a rich and jam- packed story.