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| Asa Butterfield and Chloë Grace Moretz in Hugo |
Between 1896 and 1914 French filmmaker George Méliés directed more than 500 films. At one point—because Méliés, like many early film pioneers, failed to adequately preserve his work—nearly all of them were thought to be lost (many of the film negatives were melted down during World War I to make rubber heels for the boots of French soldiers). A magician by trade, Méliés was fascinated by the advent of motion pictures, which allowed him to further hone his craft through time lapse photography, stop-start editing, and other forms of cinematic trickery like double exposure. While inventors Auguste and Louis Lumiére saw movies as little more than a passing fad—and were merely interested in producing short documentaries like the 50-second The Arrival of a Train at La Coitat Station (1895), which, as the title tells the viewer, showed nothing more than a train pulling into a station—Méliés understood that movies could entertain and delight through their ability to manipulate reality.
As the titular Hugo Cabret recounts at one point in Martin Scorsese’s latest feature-length film Hugo, his father once told him that seeing A Trip to the Moon (1902)—one of Méliés’ most famous films, about a group of space travelers who board a bullet-ship and are shot out of a cannon into the eye of the moon—was like seeing his dreams come alive while he was awake. The power of cinema—and its ability to make the fantastical into something near real—and the importance in preserving early examples of the art form is something very near and dear to Scorsese's heart. He loves—truly loves—movies and is one of the most vocal proponents of film preservation. And his affection for film is no more apparent than in Hugo, where he (along with screenwriter John Logan) meditates on the transformative properties of movies and their ability to make the curious child lurking inside us all come alive again when starring up at the flickering silver screen.
Paramount made a mistake in marketing Hugo. Trailers and TV spots positioned the film as, essentially, “Martin Scorsese does a kids movie”. And that’s wrong, mostly because that’s not what Hugo is at all. Also, the people who truly appreciate Scorsese as a filmmaker largely feel that way because his films are brutal, graphic, amazingly violent and cinematically superb in their direction, writing, scoring, acting and everything else that makes a movie good. People who love kids movies… well… don’t. (The two groups are as close to mutually exclusive as you can get for nearly the same exact reasons--in most cases anyway).
And like, I think, so many other film fans then, when I first heard that Scorsese was going to tackle a PG-rated family film, I was apprehensive. Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t think he’s ever made a truly terrible movie (even his misfires are technically impressive). Indisputably, Scorsese is a master of the cinematic art form—one of the finest directors there has ever been—and quite possibly the last great American auteur. But Scorsese is usually at his absolute best when he stays within the gritty, blood-spattered, hard-R worlds of gangsters, street violence and psychological drama. Not, say, when he’s paying homage to the Hollywood musical of yesteryear, or tackling the biography of the Dali Lama. And the early trailers for Hugo really sold the film as kiddy fare, which is a shame, but it’s so, so, so much more than that.
In many ways I think Hugo is the director's greatest achievement. Hugo isn't like anything Scorsese has ever done before, but in some ways it's actually more of a “Scorsese movie” than nearly everything he’s ever released. Mostly because, above all else, what defines Scorsese isn’t the blood and grit, but the passion he obviously has for the stories he wants to tell with each picture. And Scorsese is nothing if not passionate about the subject—the legacy of, arguably, the most important figure in film history—buried underneath the superficialities of this simple “kids movie”.
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| The boy and the old magician |
Hugo likes to fix things—like the broken automaton found by his father (Jude Law) before he died, which the boy has hidden in his makeshift bedroom atop the station—and Isabelle likes to help people. Together, they use Hugo’s technical know-how to fix the robot and help Isabelle’s godfather, Papa George (Ben Kingsley), a cantankerous old magician who runs a dreary toyshop in the train station, which no one visits anymore, and her godmother, Mama Jeanne (Helen McCrory), a wife pained by her husband’s feelings of failure.
The performances are exceptional. Butterfield, a rare child actor with a seemingly endless supply of talent, gives a performance so perfect—so earnest, honest, joyous and sad all at the same time—that certain less-capable adults should feel ashamed to call themselves actors and ought to just give up before they look any more foolishly incapable. I can’t imagine anyone else playing Hugo, and if Butterfield doesn’t get some sort of recognition come awards season, it’ll be a crime. Moretz is great too, although I never really expected anything less from her. And—after slumming it in some truly awful crap like that Thunderbirds (2004) movie and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (2010)—Kingsley finally gives a performance worthy of his knighthood and Oscar again.
The cast is rounded out with familiar faces that provide subtle background grace. Ray Winstone plays Hugo’s drunken uncle who teaches the boy how to fix the station clocks. Sir Christopher Lee plays a friendly librarian who happily lends out Robin Hood. Harry Potter alums Richard Griffiths and Frances de la Tour play a pair of old people-watchers, who sit all day in the station bumbling their way through failed flirtations and awkward silences. Their dynamic is mirrored by a similarly uncomfortable budding romance between a shop-girl (Emily Mortimer), who sells flowers, and the cricket-y station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) with a wonky mechanical leg brace, who has it out for “thieving orphans” like Hugo. The brilliant and underrated Michael Stuhlbarg plays a man fascinated by Méliés, and—like Scorsese does to moviegoers in 2011—is instrumental in bringing the filmmaker’s genius to a wider audience.
On the surface, Hugo is a grand romance. It’s an almost sickeningly sweet slice of sentimentality, filled with boiler steam, brass and a robot stuffed with clockwork gears. An old-timey, slow paced, gorgeously shot film about love and loss (and steampunk). And it all works beautifully. But there’s something working much deeper beneath the surface of Hugo that makes it Scorsese’s masterstroke. Hugo is also a love letter to the first generation of films and filmmakers; Scorsese’s ode to his profession and the art form that's given him so much joy since his early days as an asthmatic shut-in child in Queens.
Hugo is an unexpectedly fantastic feature and, even hours after watching, I’m still mesmerized by the magnificence of the subtext that lingers just beneath the surface. It’s a shame that Hugo is being so poorly marketed. It’s a wonderful tale and not just one of the best films of the year, but one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long, long time. Go see it. Hugo deserves to be seen; and to see it on the big screen will certainly excite and awake that childlike wonderment buried inside us all. Only, because Hugo was shot and projected digitally (in occasionally effective 3D), the chance that you'll notice a little silver screen flicker is probably a lot less likely.
***** (5) out of ***** (5) stars
Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Written by: John Logan, based on the book "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" by
Brian Selznick
Starring: Ben Kingsley, Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz, Jude Law, Helen McCrory with Ray Winstone, Michael Stuhlbarg, Emily Mortimer and Sacha Baron Cohen
Music by: Howard Shore
Rating: PG
Runtime: 126 minutes (2 hours, 6 minutes)
Studio: Paramount Pictures
Review & copyright property of Ethan C. Stevenson
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