StinkyLulu's Scorsese NogginScratcher

StinkyLu & MrStinky finally saw Martin Scorsese's The Aviator.

It was fine. Just fine.
Impressive to be sure. Epic, big-vision movie-making at its most expert but...
~A few performances to pinch your nipples along the way. (StinkyLu was particularly thrilled by Cate Blanchett as Kate Hepburn, Frances Conroy as Kate Hepburns bitch-ass Connecticut mom, Alan Alda as some wierd-ass variation on a congressman ostensibly from Maine and Matt Ross in a quiet steady & utterly crucial performance as Howard Hughes co-visionary in all things aviation.)
~A scandalously giddy portrait of depression era Hollywood nightlife. (Indeed, the respective bandleader/singers had a garishness of their performance/affect that really served to underscore the surrealism of the whole dream factory aspect of big-money west coast hucksterism...)
~Thrilling, brilliant, surprising art direction -- very nearly induces the visual equivalent of a diabetic coma.

It was fine. Just fine. But so what?
Most of the film was herky-jerky skidoodle through the well-known path of Howard Hughes' early life. Unfortunately, the mysteries of his psyche -- so long a subject of speculation, so scrupulously unavailable to public review -- become the mysteries at the emotional heart of this movie. Criticlasm's comments of January 10 liken the film to a sumptuous buffet that becomes vaguely but insistently nauseating as the hours pass. Hear that. Yet, for StinkyLu, it's almost more like the film wants to be like the whirlwind force that surrounds the eery quiet of the center, like the mystery of Howard Hughes' psyche is the eye -- note Scorsese's concluding shot -- the eye of the hurricane that was Hughes' obsession driven life. But it become that cliche -- a puzzle cloaked in the mystery of a conundrum...

Indeed, StinkyLu's beginning to wonder if this is the key to the strangely dissatisfying nature of Scorsese's films. Possibly the most accomplished film director working today, the one with the most entrancingly appreciative knowledge of film history, who nonetheless remains at the contemporary frontier of cinematic (as distinct from CGI) technique -- Scorsese's incredibly able to create these extraordinary cinematic accomplishments but his films of the last 10 years seem almost emotionally hollowed by the meticulous construction of the spectacular apparatus...

What's wierd is that actors love him. And he seems to love actors. Here, DiCaprio/Blanchett or DiCaprio/Alda scenes crackle -- where the technique combines with inspiration to do something really worth watching. In these scenes, Scorsese seems to orient the film to position the acting as the star. But even these moments underscore those acting moments which really should have worked, the most surprisingly inadequate performances in the film: Alec Baldwin as Juan Trippe & Kate Beckinsale as Ava Gardner. That the DiCaprio/Baldwin scene through the door becomes nearly tedious while the DiCaprio/Blanchett scene illuminates every emotional corner of the film: something's really wierd with that imbalance... (Same too in the imbalance comparing the bizarre vagueness of John C. Reilly and the vivid Matt Ross -- these should be parallel relationships & StinkyLu refuses to fault John C. Reilly for inadequate ability/talent as a supporting player.) And it's these incidents of directorial unevenness that seem to make the rest of the directorial accomplishments sag...

So. It's wierd but, for StinkyLu, The Aviator was just fine.