Originally posted by sirrahbed
Hubby and I saw Aviator and loved it!! It is the story of Howard Hughes - supposedly the world's wealthiest man at that time. It showed his mental illness very well and the actresses who portrayed the famous starlets were very good I thought - especially Katherine Hepburn's part. I was not aware that Howard Hughes knew so much about aviation and truly is a part of history. I had only thought of him as a germophobic hermit
Deb ~ Isn't it funny how different people are? I didn't like the movie because I did know about his contributions to aviation and that's what I wanted to know more about, not his mental illness. It made me very uncomfortable because of living with a family member who has these "tendencies". Thank goodness, he doesn't have them near to that extent.

Maybe one of the messages of the film was that genius and mental illness aren't that far apart. A genius can get fixated on an idea and will stop at nothing until the problem is solved. Taken too far, the fixation could be considered a mental illness.

I did like Kate Blanchet's portrayal of Katherine Hepburn. I had read that they have lived together in the 30's or 40's and had kept it pretty quiet. I didn't know that he had been involved with Ava Gardner.

I learned a lot, but not near enough about his aviation exploits and because of my own "issues", the mental illness part of the story gave me the heebie-geebies (I'm sure that's a medical term! ).

So, this PTers vote is 2 thumbs DOWN.

Jadapit, have you seen the movie yet?