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Directed by: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale, John C. Reilly, Alec Baldwin, Alan Alda, Ian Holm, Danny Huston, Gwen Stefani, Jude Law, Adam Scott

Runtime: 170 mins

Martin Scorsese gives into the character like an eagle to its prey. He is left helpless to the dictates of great cinema. The detailing with which he makes this beautiful movie is almost spellbinding. The character is Howard Hughes who is one of the most eccentric characters of Hollywood. He was probably one of the richest men at his prime. He was a successful producer and he used to fly aircrafts as well.

The film begins with a dream sort of sequence of Hughes childhood where his mom gives him a bath and tells him he is not safe. But this more like a premonition of things to come in his life. He plunges himself into producing the movie Hells Angels and going about in his own mad way of re-shooting scenes again and again. At times flying the planes by himself to re-shoot some of the scenes. The film turns out to be a big success and he makes continues making several other ventures. But this does not stop him; he begins to venture into the aviation industry. This is where things get messy for him.

In the course of all this success he meets some of the most charming of the time like Katharine Hepburn played by the versatile Cate Blanchett who takes to the role like a fish in a pond. She creates the necessary impetus for Hughes future mental state. Hughes slowly plunges into obsessive compulsive disorder and reclusiveness. This is the pointing the film where the actor Leonardo Di Caprio who plays Hughes emerges out of the cocoon of his character making him his own. Till then Leo is in a muted recline playing the character like it is. But the moment the disease kicks in he transforms into something really sad and poignant.

There is at times a parallel that Scorsese draws from this man in the sense he had gone through several of Hughes life’s stages. It deals with the madness with which he used to carry out some of his older productions. Scorsese was a man who believed in perfection taking of every scene like it was his first. His use of different stock for various parts of Hughes life is to be in tune with various stocks Hughes had used at the time. This film would not be complete with a mere mention of the penultimate scene where everything seems to be back to normal but suddenly we are hit by Leo’s sudden change and the final phrase he leaves us with “The way to the future”. This is what good cinema is all about.