Amy and I saw The Aviator a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. It was beautifully and interestingly shot. Leonardo DiCaprio gave his best performance since What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? - a fantastic movie if you haven’t seen it. Scorsese’s attention to detail and epic proportions were flawless as usual.
Despite all this, The Aviator was also the most boring film I can remember seeing. I can’t exactly figure out why, but I think it boils down to “Who Cares?” With all the biopics in recent years, it’s hard to understand why they keep making them. It would be really hard for the formula of brilliant (artist, scientist, leader) rises to success while succumbing to or triumphing over (alcoholism, drug addiction, mental illness, personal tragedy, all of the above) to be interesting after I’ve already seen A Beautiful Mind, Pollock, Basquiat, Frida, etc. It didn’t help that the other characters in The Aviator were flatly presented, nor am I likely to be inspired when the subject was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
Kinsey actually kept me involved, but its subject matter was a bit more titillating. On the other hand, Amy took an $8 nap when we saw it. Not sure if she was bored or just really comfortable in those stadium theater seats. Incidentally, my favorite biopic in recent memory is Woody Allen’s Sweet and Lowdown, which was actually a parody of biopics.
I still haven’t seen The Aviator and look forward to it, but I had largely the same reaction to The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. The difference in its flawed equation was more purely mechanical than stylistic. Any one of the characters or scenes was rich and memorable but there was no real narrative tying quirky scene with odd character X to subtle scene with engaging character Y — not even French David Bowie. Thank god the Fantastic Four movie will be out later this year, eh?