With Raging Bull, Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader reconfigured the traditional structure of the biopic to focus intently, almost obsessively, on the self-destructive drive and violent impulses that plague a professional boxer who’s even more at war with himself than his opponents in the ring. Now, it may be a stretch to say that De Niro’s Jake LaMotta and Leonardo Di Caprio’s Howard Hughes in The Aviator share the same afflictions. But where the former was a King in the ring and often something of a jester outside of it, the latter is equally defined by a stark duality that led directly to both his rise to greatness and his self-imposed demise. The two men share a compulsive need for control, of themselves and their partners, and while only La Motta’s rising paranoia led to a physical violence toward others, Hughes internalized violence was perhaps even more crippling in the long run.
This combination of an unwavering desire for success and/or power being hampered by paranoia, addiction or self-doubt is found in many of Scorsese’s biopics and historical dramas. It’s certainly there in Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) in Goodfellas, and even Willem Dafoe’s Jesus in The Passion of the Christ is tortured by his inner demons as his flock exponentially grows. Ironically, in The Wolf of Wall Street, it’s Jordan Belfort’s (DiCaprio again) boundless narcissism and amorality—even drugs don’t make him paranoid—that delays his downfall, but his comeuppance is still inevitable. These films are all incredibly distinctive spins on the traditional “Great Man” narrative, each tracing one man’s rise to some form of greatness, while excavating the specificities of their damaged psyches to show how the very things responsible for their rise are ultimately the cause of their downfall as well.
The Aviator opens with a brief scene of Hughes as a child being gently bathed by his mother (Amy Sloan), who warns him that cholera is spreading through his neighborhood and reminds him of the importance of steering clear of germs and viruses by having him slowly spell about the word “quarantine.” This scene introduces the aluminum tin, containing a soap bar, that Hughes would carry with him the rest of his life, and suggests that his OCD stemmed at least in part from his mother’s seemingly neurotic concern with cleanliness. But this is as close as the film gets to examining the causes of Hughes’ condition. It merely introduces the genesis of the man’s escalating neuroses before jumping decades ahead to Hughes’ rise to both legendary Hollywood producer and aviation pioneer. Scorsese’s concerns lie far less with causes than effects.
Hughes’ relentless quest for perfection is highlighted from the very start with his massive three-year production of Hell’s Angels, in which even the 24 cameras he has on hand aren’t enough for the expansive aerial footage he has planned. Later, he waits over six months, at a cost of thousands of dollars a day, for clouds to appear in the California sky, and then goes on to completely reshoot the initially silent film for sound once he senses that this tectonic technical shift is “the way of the future.” In this case, of course, Hughes’ domineering attitude and meticulous attention to the minutest of details pays off in spades, developing his reputation as a risk taker who, against all odds, managed to get results. His OCD is wholly productive at this stage of his life, manifesting itself as bold, outside-the-box thinking, but only a small tweak in terms of luck or circumstances would weaponize the qualities that made Hughes such a hugely successful man. And Scorsese presents the man as perpetually walking along that razor’s edge.
As the film shifts into his 18-month relationship with Katharine Hepburn and his exploits as the founder of TWA and a defense contractor for the U.S. Military, Scorsese gradually begins to reveal the darker side of Hughes’ pursuit for absolute perfection. The chinks in his armor become more glaring, whether in his excessive squirming when Errol Flynn (Jude Law) grabs a pea off his dinner plate or his badgering of an executive who can’t seem to find the lone crumb on his lapel that’s driving Hughes mad.
It gets a lot worse, but Scorsese doesn’t typically linger on such moments and instead always plows forcefully ahead with the same urgency and gusto that Hughes brought to every project. Unlike most modern biopics, The Aviator flies by and, even at nearly three hours, brings something new and exciting with nearly every scene thanks in large part to the director’s typically mobile, dynamic camera and Thelma Schoonmaker’s sharp, rhythmic editing. Even the courtroom scenes where Hughes is hypocritically grilled about his war profiteering by Senator Owen Brewster (Alan Alda) have a real snap to them, visually as well as in the dialogue and acting, that makes them just as invigorating as when Hughes crashes his beloved plane into a Beverly Hills neighborhood.
This isn’t to suggest that Scorsese glances over the increasingly devastating effects of Hughes’ OCD, but rather that even the more harrowing scenes of Hughes locked away in a room urinating into bottles are rendered in ways that have a vitality through their stylistic inventiveness where most Hollywood biopics would settle for faux-earnest somberness. Indeed, one of the film’s most indelible shots is of the naked, long-bearded Hughes ranting to himself as projected images from Hell’s Angels literally cover his body. It’s a beautiful and harrowing image, containing the two extremes of Hughes—the successful dreamer and the helpless, tortured soul. In The Aviator, and Scorsese’s films in general, they are often just two sides of the same coin.
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