Dir. Martin Scorcese
2004
Or Why Should I Care About Rich People with Mental Illness?
Martin Scorcese’s Oscar-nominated, Oscar-designed biopic of Howard Hughes, sticks to what Hollywood thinks “works” in such a film, while it tries occasionally to undermine its self-achievement, feelgood ending. But mostly it reminded me that I don’t really like biopics, and I don’t really care too much about the woes of billionaires, and there is something empty at the heart of the film and its Hughes’ character. Geoffrey O’Brien made a big hoohah in Film Comment about this time last year about the film, praising it for exactly that: the reclusive, germ phobic Hughes won’t conform to the demands on the sort of narrative the story sets out. Well, that’s a bit “meta” as criticism, I suppose.
There are a few good things here, and they’ve been duly noted elsewhere–Cate Blanchett’s Katherine Hepburn is fabulous (I’d much rather follow her story) and the crash of the F-16 into Beverly Hills (burn, baby, burn!) is just the type of visceral sequence Scorcese loves to pull off. But again, this scene is exactly my problem with the picture. I feel less for Hughes, who should have turned back earlier and possibly saved the plane, than for the people whose houses he’s destroying (unless, of course, they were rich bastards too, ho ho ho, see above comment).
My friend Jon went so far to call the film right wing, mostly due to its celebration of unfettered wealth, its promotion of free trade unhampered by government interference, and, most damagingly, its distrust of the intellectual class, as portrayed in the scene where Hughes dines with the extended Hepburn family. Hughes is portrayed as the underdog, as if he’d come from his nothing and made his fortune. The Hepburns are portrayed as the idle rich, intelligensia who talk about yucky things like modern art and poetry. In real life, Hughes’ father was a Harvard educated oil and drill bit businessman–and who made the fortune that Hughes inherited when he was a teenager. Hepburn’s mother was a suffragette and formed a womens’ rights group that eventually morphed into Planned Parenthood. Her father was a urologist who was involved in making the threat of venereal disease a public issue, not one of shame. Progressives both, but, you know, not hands-on flyin’ machine builders like Hughes. But again, why should I really care about Howard Hughes? Because, despite mental illness, he still spent a lot of money and got the Spruce Goose up in the air, once, for about a mile?
Great cinematography (although a bit too much with the two-tone business), but surprisingly jarring editing from Scorcese’s stalwart Thelma Schoonmaker (she won an Oscar for it, what do I know.)