Hugo (2011)

Martin Scorsese's Hugo (2011), based off of Brian Selznick's children's novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret (2007), is a memorable oddity in the filmmaker's always watchable filmography.  A PG rated film that does not feature an once of bloodshed or a single curse word, Hugo lacks the most superficial of Scorsese identifiers.  Delving deeper into the production, it is also the first film that Scorsese has shot digitally and in 3D.  In other words, it's a change of direction that looks unlike anything the filmmaker has produced before.  Considering Scorsese's age and the longevity of his career, one of the accomplishments of Hugo is that it showcases the talents of a filmmaker willing to take risks...while also chronicling the career of a filmmaker who took risks and lost.  

Hugo essentially begins as a silent film.  We watch the young Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) as he stands guardian of the clocks of Montparnasse Station, oiling the sprockets and cranking the gears of the mechanisms while watching the city life pass below.  He evades the awkward station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) while watching two elderly folks flounder at love (Richard Griffiths and Frances de la Tour).  Twenty minutes go by as Scorsese allows us to inhabit the unique, 3D, version of 1930s Paris that he, cinematographer Robert Richardson, and set designer Dante Ferretti have constructed for us.  We don't know where the film is headed; we are just asked to bask in the glow of Scorsese's city of lights.  

When the film finally touches down, we discover that Hugo was orphaned when his father (Jude Law) passed away in a fire at a museum.  The father and son were hard at work on fixing an antique automaton when the fire hit.  Hugo now feels compelled to finish the project, hoping that it will fill the void his father left when he passed away.  Hugo targets an elderly shopkeeper (Ben Kingsley), whose small toys provide Hugo with an ample amount of gears and sprockets to finish the automaton.  One day, the elderly man catches Hugo and steals his notebook, filled with sketches on how to finish the repairs, and the young boy is forced to enlist the shopkeeper's niece, Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz), to help him in completing the repairs.  When they finally fix the robot, they discover that Isabelle's uncle isn't merely an elderly shopkeeper, but the forgotten pioneer of cinema:  Georges Méliès.  

Hugo is less an kids adventure story and more of a love letter to early cinema.  The film doesn't have a traditional antagonist, nor does it have clear objectives.  Scorsese simply wants us to appreciate the roots of the art form that he holds dear; to acknowledge the greatness of Méliès and his inescapable influence on all that came after (the French filmmaker, a pioneer of early special effects, also unintentionally made a few 3D films).  The film is as much an homage as it is a history lesson, sure to appease most cinephiles and film historians but sure to alienate most children (I hope this isn't true, but we'll see...  Like scribe John Logan's Rango, this one seems destined to be a great film that misses its key demographic).  Moreover, the film is also a small soap box for Scorsese's passion towards film preservation.  It's a film history lecture that intersects with an awe inspiring investigation of 3D imaging (I was fortunate enough to see a sneak preview that was capped off with a Q&A between Scorsese and James Cameron, who quickly went on to call the film the best use of 3D he had seen).  

The film is strong across the board.  Kingsley perfectly balances his anger and frustration with kindness while newcomer Asa Butterfield is able to use his sapphire colored eyes to run a spectrum of emotion.  I admired the film's structure for avoiding many stereotypes (making the inspector into a evil buffoon, allowing the story to run off on world establishing tangents like a trip to a book store or a stop at a cafe) but also felt that it could have used a bit more Jude Law.  Hugo's relationship with his father and lack of relationship with his uncle (Ray Winstone) serve as his central motivations and while Scorsese and Logan vaguely establish this, they miss a few opportunities to buttress the theme.  However, I acknowledge that this is largely splitting hairs.  Quite simply, watching Scorsese honor Méliès both in content and in the exploration of a new form of moving image for two hours is like watching a master magician conjure up a variation on an established trick.  Hugo is magical film about the magical beginnings of the cinema of attractions and, without a doubt, stands amongst the strongest films of the year.