“He is his own monster”: The character Martin Scorsese compared to a mythological creature
Martin Scorsese has taken on projects of all shapes and sizes in his lengthy directorial career. He’s told stories of Biblical figures and boxers in black and white, ventured to secluded islands and the suburbs of New York, and delved into topics ranging from masculinity to community. His filmography spans a vast time period and an impressive number of themes, but there is one consistency.
Complex, morally ambiguous, but well-developed characters seem to find their way to the centre of almost every Scorsese flick. From the taxi-driving, Mohawk-sporting Travis Bickle to the mammoth task of depicting Jesus on screen in The Last Temptation of Christ, Scorsese clearly loves a main character that both he and his lead actor can really sink his teeth into.
Often, those characters are borrowed from real life. Scorsese has retold the stories of a number of figures from the real world over the course of his career, from the corrupt billionaire businessman Jordan Belfort to Raging Bull boxer Jake LaMotta. Most recently, he took on the story of the Osage murders in Killers of the Flower Moon.
Often, the stories of those actual people are all the more interesting and affecting, a statement that was proved to be true with Scorsese’s 2004 film The Aviator. In his second collaboration with his long-term on-screen collaborator Leonardo DiCaprio, Scorsese told the story of Howard Hughes, a hugely wealthy businessman whose work spanned countless endeavours from directing films to pushing the boundaries of aviation.
Hughes also had obsessive-compulsive disorder, which Scorsese charted throughout the film. Speaking about the character during an interview with the BBC, Scorsese described him as the “richest king who gets everything he wants,” but “ultimately his family has a curse from the Gods.” Hughes may have gathered impressive riches and endless business endeavours but struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder only worsened.
This was an interplay that Scorsese was particularly interested in delving into in The Aviator. He looked to chart both Hughes’ successes in film and aerospace engineering, as well as the so-called “curse” he tried to keep at bay in the background. In this way, Scorsese saw him as very similar to a character you might find in Greek mythology.
“It reminds me very much of the curse of the ancient world in a way,” he explained, “Like the Minotaur in the labyrinth, the idea was that Icarus’s father Daedalus built the labyrinth to keep the Minotaur in the centre under lock and key. Basically throughout his whole life Howard Hughes tries to escape the labyrinth, but he is the Minotaur, he is his own monster.”
This metaphor seems to compare Hughes both to the Minotaur and to those trying to keep it at bay. Hughes may be trying to escape the labyrinth of his mind, to run from the Minotaur within it, but they are one and the same. If the Minotaur represents his OCD, he cannot outrun it; he can only learn how to manage it and work around it in his life.
Greek mythology contains some of the most dense and dramatic characters and stories ever written, so it makes sense that Scorsese was particularly taken by Hughes’ story and hoped to convey it on-screen. He received widespread acclaim for doing so, taking home five Academy Awards and impacting audiences emotionally through DiCaprio’s performance.
