It is brutal to watch. We go from the sleek, art-deco skies of the 1930s to the sticky, sweaty hell of a single room. Scorsese doesn’t allow us to look away. He forces us to realize that the man who built planes that broke the sound barrier couldn’t open a bathroom door without a bar of soap as a shield. Visually, the film is a feast. Scorsese and cinematographer Robert Richardson used a specific color grading process to mimic the look of early two-strip Technicolor for the 1920s/30s sequences—giving the skin tones a pale, ghostly, almost unrealistic hue. Then, as we move into the 1940s, the palette shifts to saturated, deep reds and blues.
Scorsese and DiCaprio masterfully depict Hughes as a man allergic to the word "no." When the studio system tells him his film Hell’s Angels is too expensive, he buys the studio. When the government tells him the Hercules (the infamous Spruce Goose) will never fly, he sits in the cockpit and wills it into the sky for one impossible, glorious minute.
Scorsese shows us that Howard Hughes touched the sky, but only because he was running away from the dirt. We celebrate the eccentric genius, but The Aviator asks us to look at the blood on the bathroom tiles. It is a film about the loneliness of exceptionalism. the aviator
At first glance, it has all the trappings of a standard “great man” Hollywood biopic. We have the rise, the fall, the quirky genius, and the period costumes. But on a second (or third) viewing, it becomes clear: The Aviator isn’t really about aviation. It’s about the prison of perfectionism and the terrifying cost of staring directly into the sun. Leonardo DiCaprio, in what should have been his first Oscar-winning performance, plays Howard Hughes: the eccentric billionaire, film producer, and aviation pioneer. The film doesn’t show us a hero; it shows us a force of nature.
In one of the most harrowing sequences in Scorsese’s entire filmography, Hughes locks himself in a screening room. He is naked. He has surrounded himself with jars of his own urine. He repeats the same phrase over and over, unable to touch a door knob, paralyzed by the fear of germs. It is brutal to watch
But the true genius is the sound design regarding Hughes’s paranoia. As the film progresses and his OCD worsens, the ambient noise grows louder. The hum of a refrigerator becomes a jet engine. A dropped fork sounds like a gunshot. We aren't just watching Hughes lose his grip; we are trapped inside his skull. No discussion of The Aviator is complete without bowing to Cate Blanchett. Her portrayal of Katharine Hepburn is less an impression and more a possession. She captures Hepburn’s Bryn Mawr accent, her gangly physicality, and her fierce independence, but she also finds the heartbreak.
It is not a triumphant ending. It is a warning. He forces us to realize that the man
But here is the tragedy the film lays bare: The Horror of the Locked Door Where The Aviator transcends the typical biopic is in its unflinching portrayal of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). This is not a quirky character trait added for flavor. It is the monster in the room.
The scene where Hepburn breaks up with Hughes is a masterclass. She tells him, with devastating honesty, that he is "a man who washes his hands until they bleed." She loves him, but she cannot drown with him. Blanchett won the Oscar, and watching the film again, it’s clear she deserved it for that single scene alone. The Aviator ends on a haunting note. Hughes, now fully lost to his compulsions, sits alone in a dark room, whispering the words of his younger self: “The way of the future. The way of the future. The way of the future.”
If you haven't seen it since 2004, or if you dismissed it as "just another biopic," do yourself a favor. Put it on. Turn up the volume. And prepare to watch a man fly so high that the air runs out.
When you think of Martin Scorsese, certain images come to mind instantly: Robert De Niro asking “You talkin’ to me?”, the bloody carnage of Goodfellas , or the financial predation of The Wolf of Wall Street . Sandwiched between the epic Gangs of New York and the Boston crime thriller The Departed lies a 2004 biopic that often gets mentioned but rarely dissected with the reverence it deserves: The Aviator .