Hugo

       ‘Hugo’ is Martin Scorsese’s tribute to film.  It’s not like anything he has ever done before and it is in the dreaded 3-D.  I’m not a huge fan of 3-D, but for this film it actually works.  This is what 3-D was meant to be.   I marveled at Scorcese’s artistry in blending live action, CGI, and 3-D to tell his story.  It’s a kid’s film, but can be enjoyed at any age.

Hugo (played with an Oscar worthy performance by Asa Butterfield) is an orphan living in the walls of a train station in 1930’s Paris.  The whole feel of the film is right out of a Charles Dickens novel.  He spends his days tinkering and fixing clocks and other mechanical devices.  It’s a talent he inherited from his father.  His only remaining connection to his father is an automaton that he is gathering scraps from around the station to complete.  He has two nemesises that keep him in constant fear; The train station’s gendarme, played by Sacha Baron Cohen (who hilariously channels Inspector Clouseau and the Kid Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang simultaneously).   The other is the grumpy old toy vendor Geoges Méliès (played to acting perfection by Ben Kingsley).

Hugo meets a young girl named Isabelle in his daily adventures (played with an equal Oscar worthy performance by Chloë Grace Moretz).  Isabelle becomes fascinated with Hugo’s life and decides to join him on his quest to find the missing part of his father’s unfinished automaton.   Hugo discovers that Isabelle is the niece of the old toy vendor and desperately needs her to help him retrieve a personal item that the vendor took from Hugo.

As with any Dicken’s novel or kid’s film from the 1960s, we soon learn there is more than meets the eye to Georges Méliès than just a grumpy old man.  Hugo learns, that Georges was the actual creator of the automaton that Hugo is working on and knew Hugo’s father very well.  In fact, far from being a forgotten old man in a train station, Hugo discovers that Georges was one of the pioneers of early films and a legend, even if Georges believes he has been forgotten.  This is where Scorcese’s true love of film shows as he intermixes the history of the birth of film into the story.  Its’ not a dry documentary, rather it captures what the emotions and marvel must have been like for those people who were first able to put the Lumiere brother’s invention of moving pictures to use.  Things we take for granted because we’ve known it all our lives almost seemed like magic back then.  Any one who is a film history enthusiast will be riveted through the last half of the film.

The true joy of this film is the artistry of it.  It’s story telling from yesteryear, but updated with modern CGI and 3-D.  It’s not gratuitous use of special effects like so many films are today.  To the contrary, it shows the potential of these tools as a way of fully telling a story.  It shows in the right hands, these advances in film are not cheap gimmicks, but truly enhances a capable director’s ability to tell a story. The opening scene of the camera sweeping through the city scape of 1930’s Paris to finally come to rest on Hugo peering out from behind a clock in a cavernous Paris train station sets the tone for the whole film and is incredible to watch.  If you ever had any doubt of Scorcese’s gift as an artist, then this film should put it to rest.  It’s a film the whole family can enjoy at many different levels.  Truly a remarkable piece of film making.

I give this film   **** stars.