Behold a performance that could be beyond Oscar-worthy for little Leo DiCaprio.
It could land him on Inside the Actors Studio. (You know, in ... that chair.)
Despite going down with the Titanic and heading up the Gangs of New York, the urchin from Growing Pains stubbornly lingered in that impossibly boyish, blemish-free face. Finally now, the growing's done and the pain paid off. DiCaprio matures spectacularly in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, the biopic to beat in a season of biopics.
Rocketing past mere portrayal, DiCaprio possesses—or is possessed by—Howard Hughes, embodying the billionaire adventurer-Hollywood maverick-genius-gone-whackjob from the late 1920s to late 1940s, before his self-imposed descent into hairy-hermit hibernation in Vegas.
Eyebrows chiseled into the V-like arch of intensity that marked Hughes' features (the man resembled a dashing ferret), voice spraying dreams, commands and demands to underlings like blasts of verbal buckshot, and body cocked in a kind of permanent forward lean as if about to pounce on any passing challenge before it wriggles away, DiCaprio vibrates with Hughes' drive, and The Aviator pulses to his pace. But DiCaprio's innate likability also fuels Hughes' immense charm, offsetting his off-putting traits.
Over two and a half hours—most of it riveting—Scorsese reveals how Hughes' brilliance flew in formation with his madness, the romantic daredevil barely concealing the crumbling neurotic. But we need not be immersed in the fully blossomed dementia that defined Hughes' later life to psychically touch it, so vividly does the director document—and so creepily does DiCaprio demonstrate—the onset and snowballing of his germ-phobias, obsessive-compulsiveness and paranoia, even during his boldest triumphs. The two take us from intriguing hints (requesting cookies with medium-size chocolate chips, "none too close to the edge") to utter hell (naked and screaming in a locked room, urinating into empty milk bottles lined up like soldiers).
Even with its macho-manic hero, The Aviator eschews the trademark Scorsese tone of unruly, barrel-chested bravado (with exceptions like The Age of Innocence), given that Hughes was the antithesis of the from-the-street ethos of Scorsese classics. Here, the auteur fashions a traditionally straightforward but superior bio that should land him in the Oscar melee again.
Following an erotically unsettling opening in which the young Hughes is bathed—nearly caressed—by his mother, who warns him of the horrors of pestilence and sets the stage for the psychological demons that will plague him, Scorsese plunges us into the whirling-dervish world of the man who inherited his dad's drill-bit fortune and never looked back.
Like a cascading waterfall, Hughes' remarkable life spills out of the screen: his Hollywood breakthrough making the WWI dogfight epic Hell's Angels (pouring money and manpower into shooting "25 miles of film," endlessly delaying filming to await the perfect cloud formations against which to shoot spectacular aerial sequences); founding Hughes Aircraft Co., shattering world speed records as a pilot, pioneering stunning new airplane designs and taking over TWA, landing him in bitter corporate battles with Pan-Am chief Juan Trippe (a calmly autocratic, cigar-puffing Alec Baldwin) and psychological gamesmanship with a senator (a weaselly Alan Alda) in Trippe's pocket; his relationship with righthand man Noah Deitrich (ever-affable John C. Reilly); and love affairs with Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett, in a vibrant yet vulnerable impersonation of the New England firebrand) and Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale, echoing the luscious glamour of Sinatra's ex).
When Hughes takes on the Hollywood moral code-meisters over Jane Russell's mountainous cleavage in his film, The Outlaw, Scorsese stages a hilarious confrontation that speaks volumes about censorship and sensibilities, even today (and, given his own content struggles, probably gave Scorsese a cathartic belly laugh). Conversely, when Hughes emerges from his harrowing psychological slide long enough to face off against Alda's oily politico in an electrifying Senate hearing, DiCaprio fully morphs into the man we most recognize, down to the last hair in his dapper mustache.
Of two plane-crash sequences, one is a terrifyingly inside and up-close depiction as Hughes, on a test flight, drops like a rock out of the sky and into a sunny suburban enclave, wings shearing the roofs off houses, decimating a neighborhood and mangling a human being into pulp.
Although singer Gwen Stefani barely makes a dent as screen siren Jean Harlow, several other star cameos pay off, including Jude Law as Erroll Flynn and Willem Dafoe as a tabloid editor Hughes buys off to squelch photos off ex-squeeze Hepburn with married lover Spencer Tracy.
But soaring over everyone in The Aviator is the compelling complexity of Leonardo DiCaprio.
The growing pains were worth it.