The Aviator

Last night, I re-lived the bliss of watching the movie that I long ago decided was my all-time favorite movie: The Aviator, with the stunning Leonardo DiCaprio.

It became my favorite movie the minute I walked out of the theater having seen it for the first time. Ever since then, whenever I want someone to get to know me, or whenever I'm in the middle of a deep conversation with a new close friend, I tend to somehow work in an opportunity to quote DiCaprio, as Howard Hughes, repeating: "The way of the future. The way of the future. The way of the future. The way of the future."

If the person I am speaking to finds this funny, then s/he will be able to understand me. If not, then probably not. It's very simple.

What does it say about me, that my "ALL-TIME FAVORITE MOVIE" is The Aviator? Well, I begin to answer this by first pointing you toward my previous favorite movie, before I had seen The Aviator. It was: The English Patient.

For this, the very first blog post in a series where I discuss my favorite movies, we'll have a perfect introduction by comparing The Aviator and The English Patient. Both of these movies have a tragic hero. That is crucial. Both of these movies have a flawed tragic hero, reminiscent of ancient Greek literature. Both of these movies tend toward the romantic, in style, philosophy and substance. Both of these movies are absolutely, breathtakingly gorgeous to watch -- Both movies fill the screen with huge, lucid portraits of landscapes, skies, architecture and masterpieces of human engineering. Both of these movies are masterpieces of cinematography.

Both of these movies have an extremely handsome male lead. Both of these movies have a quirky, unusual, melodramatic, introspective, fearful and socially awkward male character as the lead. And the things he must do! to make us love him. In both cases.

Both of these movies have Drama, with a capital D. Some would argue that both of these movies are overly dramatic and overly romantic -- that they veer so far from realism that they are unbearable. In their very unbearableness, they are both beautiful. Whether it is an apocalyptic small plane crash where the roofs of Los Angeles are torn in two and burst aflame, or a poetic dialogue between two lovers trapped in a dark car while a desert sandstorm gusts around them, the scenes in these movies will echo eternally in the walls of your imagination. They will not let you go.

Isn't the height of good Drama just fundamentally defined by how readily you are taken away from the mundane and lifted up into an experience that challenges your imagination? Your mind must burn new neural territory in order to accomodate how alive this makes you feel, and in order to burnish words for the new aesthetic you have been given.

So -- that's a nice introduction, isn't it? But let's talk just a little bit about why The Aviator is better than The English Patient.

First of all, The English Patient has a weaker plot. It relies on the adaptation of a book; the adaptation was much better than the book, (yes, I read it) --it kept the romantic magic the author intended. It just didn't translate in terms of the action into a movie. The action becomes, in the movie, a story of a love affair and a cuckolded husband, set against a backdrop of a war. The war becomes the most important character, and the moral message of "War is Evil" does not roll out lightly. No, it thunders down. The war/Evil character is primarily responsible for what befalls everyone in the movie. The burns on the patient; the bombing of loved ones; the missing thumbs; even the fatal union of the lovers is shaped by war. The war/Evil is so obviously the lowest, most morally wrong of all the wrongs that could be -- so much so that the affair, and the harm it does to the cuckolded husband, become forgivable and seem less wrong. They are let off the hook completely.

Which, in turn, (deeply analyzing the plot at this point, so follow along with me), almost destroys the weight of the problem for the two lovers. You may think that the lovers are driving the plot, but you see, they're not really. How could it be so important for them to stay apart, given what's going on with the war? --The plot is weak. Upon repeated viewings it becomes tiresome.

Ralph Fiennes is damned good and Kristin Scott Thomas earned my lifelong admiration. I have never been able to forget the charm of Naveen Andrews. I love the movie still, and I'll keep it on my favorites list. But it definitely got knocked down several bars as time went on and I saw more movies.

The Aviator is breathless and literally, awesome. The planes alone -- the engineering -- make the film worth watching. Right from the start you are treated to triumphant scenes. Hughes informs his new CFO that he's standing looking at the "largest private airforce in the entire world." So right away you get the scope of it. The planes swoop and duck, and sometimes you get this amazing angle as if you were in one of the planes yourself! Cate Blanchett steps in to play Katharine Hepburn, and you feel that as a movie viewer you have suddenly gone to Heaven without having died. DiCaprio makes you know Hughes, makes you know not only Hughes' temper and stridency, passion and vulnerability, but also his shyness, his nightmares, and his inner ego. I have never in all my life felt like I could live inside another human's brain as much as DiCaprio allowed me permission to live inside Hughes'. And I relate to Hughes. I relate to him because anyone with a big heart would have to relate to him. We've all been that vulnerable at some point. We've all wished we were that powerful.

Plot, as far as it goes, in this movie takes on one of my criteria for "HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL DIRECTING;" which is to say, it is subtle and nuanced. I can't even sum up the plot in a few sentences. I might be able to say that it is a biopic of Howard Hughes, which is vague enough not to touch the plot question, but avoid it altogether! Or, I might be able to sum up the plot in a few paragraphs. That's the range. For example, I might write a paragraph about each of these questions: is it a movie about competing airlines? Is it a movie about United States history? Is it about obsessive-compulsive disorder? Is it a love story? Is it about Hollywood? Is it about money and greed, power and fame? Holy shit, buddy: it's about all of those things and more. This movie is, in short, epic. It's epic because it's directed by Martin Scorsese. He has a knack for making things larger than life, nuanced, and unforgettable. I'll write more on the perfect partnership of Scorsese and DiCaprio soon, when I discuss another fave, The Gangs of New York.

There are so many scenes in this movie that I could rave about. I don't know what excited me more: the sweeping interior of a Hollywood lounge, the plane crash scene mentioned above, the lights of nighttime LA as Cate and Leo glide above it in a gentle airplane motion (that you as the viewer can actually feel, like you're back in childhood riding the Peter Plan flight ride at Disneyland), or the horror of the dank red theater in which Hughes slides into craziness, growing wolflike and repeating his instructions for milk delivery into the void. This movie is SO big in my imagination. It takes me to SO many different places, unreal places, vivid dreamscapes. It satisfies me intellectually, too -- when Hughes takes the microphone into his overscrubbed fingers and charges Senator Brewster with corruption, this is quite a bit more than a history lesson. The movie is political, and DiCaprio is at his best in those scenes.

Shall I go on? On a personal note, the scene when Hughes burns all of his clothing after Hepburn walks out on him will always move my heart. On a technical note, the scene where Hughes is barraged by cameras for the debut of his movie, and bulbs are smoking, popping and exploding all around him, is the best piece of cinematography that I have ever witnessed.

If you don't believe me, watch it again.

So we have powerful acting, (of the highest caliber -- the kind that makes you intimate with the characters), nuanced direction, action-packed and complex screenwriting, layered and intellectual plotlines, unforgettable cinematography, and stellar stylistic design from head to toe. It has the best ending to a film that I can possibly imagine, with one the most ironic and memorable lines of dialogue for its concluding sequence.

One last thing: The Aviator bears watching again. And again. And again.

A Word About Directors

Probably the most important thing to evaluate when evaluating films in any serious way is the directing. I have often overstated the importance of actors, mainly because I love actors. I love what they do. I am in love with their craft. However, it's ironic because the true author of a film, the person whose voice most powerfully influences it, is usually the director (unless the script was written by Charlie Kaufman).

A really great movie will almost always have a great director. It's very difficult to have a great movie with poor direction (though I'm sure I'll come up with at least one example). The director is, as I say, the voice, the personality, the perspective that shapes the entire thing.

A good director will give you a recognizable feeling. His or her point of view will be visible, it will be felt, it will be in the details and in the wide view. But it will not be heavy-handed.

The director is more like the author than the actual screenwriter. This is usually because the director takes the script and changes everything. Or, because the script is used strictly for dialogue. Occasionally, you have someone who is both writer/director and does it well. Again, more often than not, it's better if the director is an authorial voice who picks up the script from someone else and works that script to pull the juice out of it. To add the details, the vibe, the colors and angles that bring it to life.

Examples: A heavy-handed director is Quentin Tarantino. He's as heavy-handed a presence in his films as Norman Mailer was in his books. There is simply NO WAY to miss the fact that you're watching a Tarantino film. His fingerprints are all over it. It's a bit much, unless you happen to love Tarantino (as many do). But none of my favorite movies are by Tarantino. I like his stuff, don't get me wrong. But how much of him can you take? When you're watching John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, you don't even feel like you're watching Travolta -- an actor who's more or less always the same everywhere he appears! -- that's how serious Tarantino is. You're sitting there going, who is this actor? He kind of looks like Travolta, but the words coming out of his mouth sound a lot more like ... oh yeah, Mr. Brown.

Another heavy-handed director is Joel Coen, (or more accurately I should say Joel and Ethan Coen). Could Burn After Reading be anybody else's movie? Go and watch Raising Arizona, followed by The Big Lebowski, and then tell me what the heck they were doing making Burn After Reading, when we had seen all their tricks already -- at their best! -- in those two films.

On the other hand, you've got Ang Lee, who was most astonishingly responsible for both Sense and Sensibility and The Ice Storm. I always forget that he was responsible for The Ice Storm, even though it is -- yes! -- one of my favorite movies. His directorial touch is very gentle, and his point of view is certainly present consistently (it's that feeling you  have while watching his films that you could cry, but you will not cry, because probably you'll miss something if you start to cry, and you don't want to push pause just for the sake of crying, when after all you are leaning in breathlessly waiting for the next scene that will probably make you want to cry even harder, so you may as well wait for that one). But it's not heavy-handed (if it were, that would be scary!).

With a good director, you know you have a reason for wanting to enter his or her world. You are compelled to re-enter his world over and over again. There is a reason to do so. In other words you see the point of view but you don't feel like you are being hit over the head with it.