True to Life?

I wasn't planning on blogging tonight but a rogue mosquito made the mistake of buzzing past my ear as I was reading in bed and got me in all out attack mode. I got it pretty swiftly (the mosquito spray was a smart purchase) but only after it got me maybe five or six times on the knuckles (my favourite!) unbeknown to me. End result is that I'm wide awake at 4.18am so I may as well do something constructive with my time, if you can consider writing a blog as constructive. That's one for another day.

What I have been doing is a bit of research into Howard Hughes, the subject of the movie 'The Aviator' that I watched at Ji's last night. Ok, I know it isn't exactly current but I rarely watch big-money 'hit' movies when they are released. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, I abhor going to see hyped-up movies that everyone says I really have to watch when the reason they are so popular has as much to do with advertising and well-placed reviews than the quality of the film. Just think about it, how often are you let down with something you had gone in with high hopes for. Secondly, I often just can't be bothered. There you go.

Although 'The Aviator' was, no doubt, entertaining (although did it really need to be that long at 2 hours 49 minutes?), I always feel uneasy when watching the supposed story of someone's life. I did my history project for the Leaving Certificate on Michael Collins when I was 17, which involved reading three biographies. When I saw the movie later, I wasn't surprised by how the truth had been twisted to make it more entertaining to watch. What did surprise me was that people took the film to be a true representation. There are situations when that could be dangerous, and Ireland of an earlier time could have been one of these. I wondered at the the time why movie-makers couldn't just use the facts available to make an entertaining end product, there were plenty of them available. In my opinion, the embellishments were unnecessary.

The same could be said about 'The Aviator' but, in this case, it annoys me even more because Scorsese appears to have gone to some lengths to glamorise Hughes and, although some faults are portrayed, the seedier ones receive no mention. Hughes is painted as the wonder-kid, womanising, eccentric, misunderstood genius whose heart is in the right place. Without knowing much of anything about his life, I felt myself willing him to rise from the ashes as he is cross-examined by a Senate committee. In reality, covert contributions to Richard Nixon may have played a part in the Watergate scandal, something unmentioned here. Additionally, although presented as a gutsy alternative to preppy College boys, it could be argued that Hughes was a high-school and college drop-out with a silver spoon. I could go on.

Although the end of the movie gives a clue that all was not well with an OCD Howard Hughes, it ends before the craziest part of his life, which would have made great viewing, but obviously would have ruffled too many feathers. My understanding of Hughes is that he was a paranoid control-freak who used his privileged position in life to take advantage of others with little or no regard for those he might hurt along the way. Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong. Interestingly, his enduring legacy may be the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, founded as a means of averting tax. Even though it may not have been his intention, it sold Hughes Aviation to GM after his death for $5bn and is the richest charity is the US. What lesson can we learn from the way Hughes (who died in 1976 an opiate addict of suspected tertiary syphilis) lived his life and his lasting influence? The film tag-line claims, "Some men dream the future. He built it."