electric mist

the aviator

Spoilers (somewhat), so don't read if that matters to you.

Late yesterday, we went to see The Aviator, the story about Howard Hughes. This was one of those moments when Carl was really sure he was going to enjoy the film (he's big on historical stuff) and I was willing to humor him for all of the times I've dragged him to films he wasn't all that keen on seeing.

Let me just put it like this: save yourselves.

I really really really want the six years I spent in that theater back.

I knew it wasn't going to be good within the first few minutes. Carl agreed with me by minute seven when I looked at him and he said, "I am sooooo sorry."

The thing is, it's hard to say what's actually bad about the film, other than I just didn't care, and no one ever ever made me care. Leonardo DiCaprio is kinda on my "eh, whatever" list. I will grant you that he may be a first class actor, but he's so baby faced that to me, he just doesn't have the gravitas to pull off some of the story, though he gives it an admirable shot. But all through the entire film, I was always thinking, "Yeah, there's Leo doing an admirable job acting," and "Wow, I'll be he's hoping that's his Oscar shot." Meanwhile, Cate Blanchette also does a fine job, particularly the first time we see her, of being Kate Hepburn. So much so, I had this eerie sense of seeing Kate up there on the screen. But later in the film, she seems to lose Kate Heburn's edge. Now, maybe that's how the real Kate Hepburn was in real life -- bigger, edgier in public, softer in private, but it felt like we were watching a digression. And the story itself had enough big moments and overcoming-the-odds sorts of stakes / tension, but everything about Howard Hughes still felt exterior, like they had assembled good visuals about why he was the way he was without really understanding them, and so they were just presenting this and hoping it would be enough. But it never felt like enough. I always felt like I was watching vignettes on Hughes, not a fully thought-out story, and certainly I never felt pulled into the experience. There was no suspension of disbelief because there was nothing really there to believe in.

And this one will probably get a bunch of Oscar nominations. I would imagine Scorscese, who hasn't won an Oscar (is that right?) will win, unless someone else totally comes out of left field. (But I can't think of anything this year that was all that great, so he stands a fair chance of walking away with it, plus the Academy wants to give him something for his longterm career achievements.)

At any rate, we left the theater wishing we'd done almost anything else, including braved the mall for some gift-exchanging we ought to have done.

Posted by toni at December 27, 2004 11:50 PM