Artykuł pochodzi z pisma "Guardian"

The Aviator


A film about Howard Hughes that doesn't show him living in a hotel room with wild hair, fingernails as long as chopsticks, feet in Kleenex boxes? Why, that would be like making a film about Iris Murdoch without the Alzheimer's ... wouldn't it?
Depending on your view, Martin Scorsese's new film is either an honourable attempt to show the early, forgotten career of a great American innovator and pioneer - or a misguided attempt at sanitising the life of a fascinating, troubled man, missing off his final, darkest act in the interests of rustling up the nearest thing possible to a feelgood ending. Either way, Scorsese is in dereliction of his duty as a storyteller. He has given us an occasionally brilliant but eccentrically structured and finally unsatisfying demi-epic, which, at almost three hours, fails to give us a complete biopic of Hughes, and fails to convince that his early life works as a self-contained story. Scorsese has long been straining to find a movie that matches his prestige with one real, unambiguous box-office smash. Despite the shiniest of casts, including Leonardo DiCaprio and Cate Blanchett, I think this Holy Grail may still elude him.
Howard Hughes - businessman, aeronautics maestro, Hollywood producer and of course fearless pilot - is arguably history's greatest undiagnosed sufferer from obsessive-compulsive disorder. It's a condition that the movie locates in a glimpse of Howard's infancy, being bathed by his mother, getting warned by her that Texas is a malarial swamp and being made to spell out the all-important word "quarantine". From then on, we see flashes of fear and foreboding in the young billionaire's face at the idea of germs, together with the talismanic muttering of Q-U-A-R-etc. Hughes's OCD gives us the best line in the film. After a terrible crash, the unconscious mogul is given a blood transfusion. "Whose blood didja use?" gasps his aide, played by John C Reilly. "Just some from our stock," replies the doctor. "He's not going to like this ..." mutters Reilly.
Leonardo DiCaprio gives a sweetly callow performance as Howard Hughes, seen first as the irrepressible young inheritor of his late daddy's drill-bit company in Houston, Texas. With unquenchable optimism and charm, he pours every cent into a staggeringly expensive and ambitious first world war movie called Hell's Angels. Hughes gets to fly planes and shoot film - his twin passions combined. Against all odds, Hughes becomes an independent operator outside the studio system, making a success of things by coupling his wealth to formidable willpower and uncompromising perfectionism and attention to detail - the creative upside, we are given to understand, of his repetitive psychological disorders.
It is in the bright springtime of Hughes's risk-taking that Scorsese finds the happiest stretch of film: where Howard meets and falls in love with Katharine Hepburn, gloriously played by Cate Blanchett. Maybe this is nothing more than an impersonation - but what an impersonation! Hepburn's angular presence, her drawling Bryn Mawr vowels, her Yankee boho patrician elegance, and indeed her fizzing sexiness, are all present and correct.
The single best scene is where Hughes is taken home to meet Hepburn's remarkable family for luncheon: the party is to include her ex-husband Ludlow. Hughes, uncomfortable and slightly deaf, is not a hit and Hepburn has occasion to rebuke him for his gaucherie, a mode of haughtiness for which Blanchett raises her prominent nose and chin like medieval weapons. She really has a great time being Hepburn. It is said that actors who play the Prince of Wales - such as Edward Fox and Michael Kitchen - can never lose the habit of sounding royal. I rather fear that Blanchett is going to sound like Katharine Hepburn for the rest of her days.
But Kate Beckinsale as Hughes's other great love, Ava Gardner, is a complete washout. Gardner's rich, voluptuous sexiness is completely absent as Beckinsale sleepwalks through the role as if she was advertising perfume. Does she realise she's supposed to be Ava Gardner ? Does she think she's playing Jennifer Aniston? What a terrible comment on the blandness of New Hollywood, compared to the singular personalities of the old order. And her relationship with Hughes is hardly represented on screen. Presumably, most of her scenes were cut.
So much for the bedroom. In the boardroom, Hughes does battle with the chief of Pan Am, played by a fleshily menacing Alec Baldwin, in an attempt to get his own airline, TWA, up and running in all the lucrative commercial routes. And he has to confront the sinister senator in Pan Am's pocket - nicely played by Alan Alda, who is always at home as the lizardly bad guy.
Both of these villains are duly dished, and the movie ends with the one and only flight of Hughes's insanely colossal troop plane, the Hercules; Scorsese invites us to see this as a quixotic victory of sorts, which also inspired Hughes and the aviation business generally to look ahead to the jet age. Hughes winds up muttering "The way of the future" over and over again - but the credits roll before the Kleenex era really starts. It is Scorsese's uneasy way of insisting on his hero's visionary importance while acknowledging his incipient madness.
There are flashes of excitement here and, with a Scorsese picture, you could hardly expect anything less. But it's an awful disappointment after the power and brio of Gangs of New York. For all its flaws, that movie had flair and energy and a sense that it was greater than the sum of its parts. The Aviator, worryingly, often looks as if it could have been by any director, a director scared of ending on a sad note. You can't help remembering the career trajectory of Jake LaMotta in Scorsese's Raging Bull: there we saw the triumph and the tragedy, the young man who gets fat and old, but who eventually finds redemption. In The Aviator, Scorsese shrinks from the second part of this artistic equation. DiCaprio's Hughes has some nice moments, but where are the final chords? Where is the coup de grace? Where, in short, is the ending? Any aviator will tell you: flying is easy. It's landing that's difficult.
acknowledge - uznawać; potwierdzać
aeronautics - lotnictwo
aide - asystent
angular - kanciasty
attempt- próba
biopic - film biograficzny
blandness - mdłość, mdły smak
box-office - kasa (kina)
callow - nieopierzony, żółtodziób
chopsticks- pałeczki do jedzenia
colossal- kolosalny
coup de grace- dobicie rannego
dereliction of duty - zaniedbanie w pracy
dish- podawać (potrawę)
drawl- zaciągać (przy mówieniu), cedzić
duly- właściwie, odpowiednio, w porę
either way - tak czy owak; tak czy siak
elude - unikać, umykać
fizz - syczeć, musować
flair - talent, smykałka
foreboding - złe przeczucie
formidable - niebywały, groźny
gaucherie - niezręczność, niezgrabność
haughtiness - wyniosłość
honourable- honorowy, zaszczytny, czcigodny
incipient - początkowy, zaczynający się
infancy - dzieciństwo
insanely- wariacko, niesamowicie
irrepressible - niepohamowany, niepowstrzymany
lizardly - jaszczurkowaty, gadzi
lucrative - lukratywny, zyskowny
menace - groźba; zagrażać
misguide- kierować na niewłaściwą drogę
mogul - bogaty biznesmen (w filmie)
mutter - mruczeć, mamrotać
presumably- przypuszczalnie
quarantine - kwarantanna
quixotic - niepraktyczny, nierealistyczny
rebuke - strofować, ganić
redemption - wybawienie, odkupienie
remarkable - godny uwagi, niezwykły
rustle up - skrzyknąć, zwołać; upichcić
sanitise- odkażać; cenzurować
shrink - kurczyć się
sinister -złowrogi
sleepwalk - chodzić we śnie
smash- hit, przebój
staggeringly - niezwykle, bardzo
strain - usiłować, wysilać się
stretch okres, odcinek
swamp- bagno, moczary
troop plane- samolot wojskowy
unambiguous - niedwuznaczny
unquenchable - nie do ugaszenia, niezaspokojony
villain - czarny charakter
voluptuous - ponętny, zmysłowy
washout - klapa, fiasko, niepowodzenie


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