The Aviator

Lentäjä / Aviator. US (c) 2004 IMF. A Miramax release. D: Martin Scorsese. SC: John Logan. DP: Robert Richardson. PD: Dante Ferretti. Songs: "Howard Hughes" by Leadbelly, etc. ED: Thelma Schoonmaker. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio (Howard Hughes), Cate Blanchett (Katharine Hepburn), Kate Beckinsale (Ava Gardner). 170 min. Digital look. Released by CTSN, Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Timo Porri / Saliven Gustavson. Viewed at Bristol, Helsinki, 29 Jan 2005. An enjoyable biopic for a film buff. It really starts with Hughes's ambitious struggle to produce Hell's Angels at the dawn of sound film. Among other things, Hughes was a fascinating maverick film producer. We are also shown entertainingly his efforts in aviation. The climax is the Senate hearings of 1947. DiCaprio was the dynamo of this big project, and in the climax he is at his best. Cate Blanchett gives a Katharine Hepburn imitation (having just seen several Cukor / Hepburn films I'm not convinced, though). Kate Beckinsale does not have the Ava Gardner aura, but the characters of both Katharine and Ava are strongly written. Hughes's life was more interesting than I had expected. A great entertainment. I did not like the digital look of the film, nor do I think Scorsese's ambitious idea to follow various historical colour designs from Cinecolor and two-strip Technicolor to fuller colour designs works well in digital. There is something more that's missing than full colour. ***