Maybe I'm blissfully ignorant, but I wasn't aware that Martin Scorsese's latest (and utterly different from anything he's done before) film HUGO had any kind of surprise or twist in its plot. Granted, the trailers and commercials don't really emphasize the fact that much of this film is about a pair of young friends, Hugo (relative newcomer Asa Butterfield) and Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz), discovering the fantastical, remarkable-to-this-day cinematic creations of innovative French filmmaker Georges Méliès (Ben Kingsley). If anything, the real shocks about HUGO have more to do with just how creative Scorsese gets in his first-time use of 3D, making it an essential part of the storytelling rather than simply a gimmick.
As the film opens, Hugo's watch-repairing father (Jude Law) is killed in a mysterious museum fire, and the boy is sent to live with his drunk uncle (Ray Winstone), who maintains the clocks in a Paris train station, opening the film up to some incredible production design set pieces in which Hugo runs and crawls around through the catacombs behind the walls of the station where the many clocks' inner workings are housed. Scorsese's camera is a fluid being that seems to defy gravity and physics to follow Hugo up, down and around tight spaces. Yes, some of the shots are clearly CG enhanced, but that doesn't make the effect any less impressive.
Hugo's uncle vanishes, leaving the boy in charge of clock maintenance, unbeknownst to the station's chief inspector played by Sacha Baron Cohen, a wounded WWI veteran with a squeaky brace on this leg and a generally sour attitude toward street urchins. Hugo befriends George (Kingsley), the proprietor of small toy shop in the station, who also happens to be (along with his wife, played by Helen McCrory) the guardian of Isablle, a girl in search of an adventure. In Hugo's case, the adventure begins with an automaton, a sort of robot his father discovered at the museum that seems to run on watch gears and can only be be activated by a key that Isabelle just happens to possess. The pair also become friendly with book shop owner played by Christopher Lee, and I only bring this up because any chance to see Lee on the big screen is worth mentioning.
The first half of the two-hour HUGO wanders a bit. Scorsese spends more time than necessary introducing us to various regulars at the trains station, including a flowershop owner played by Emily Mortimer, whom the inspector fancies a bit. There's also an older couple (Frances de la Tour and Richard Griffiths) that have a mostly silent series of exchanges as they adorably attempt to court. However, these little side stories take up a great deal of time, especially in the opening hour, and as dazzling as Scorsese's visuals are, the time moves slowly. That being said, once the automaton is set into motion and the direction of the film becomes clear (the two are tied together), Hugo becomes something truly incredible.
It would short change the film not to mention what the best moments are, but in the spirit of keeping certain plot elements something of a surprise, I'll warn you that semi-spoilery stuff is approaching. What truly dazzled me about Hugo were the countless recreations of Georges Méliès at work creating some of his most famous films, including his 1902 classic A TRIP TO THE MOON. If you're at all familiar with the filmmaker's history and works, these are the moments that will likely bring tears to your eyes; if not, you still get this wonderful sense of history and an almost spiritual drive in Méliès to create and be original and imaginative. The joy in his eyes as he sees new outlandish costumes or devises (or more accurately, invents) special effects for his fantasy sequences cannot be denied.
I especially liked the way Scorsese not only celebrates one of the creators of modern film but those who admire and write about film (who I guess would include Brian Selznick, who wrote the book this story is based on, and screenwriter John Logan). I was genuinely taken by the appearance of Michael Stuhbard as Rene Tabard, a film writer whose book on early silent films is the impetus for the kids to discover that the toy maker is actually Méliès. Tabard's passion for film history should ring of chord of recognition in many devoted movie lovers, and it's no wonder that Scorsese clearly loves the character.
In many ways, the Méliès portions of HUGO remind me of Scorsese's documentary/memoir A PERSONAL JOURNEY WITH MARTIN SCORSESE THROUGH AMERICAN MOVIES, only in this case it's French movies and rather than simply showing clips of his favorite films, he recreates them. The result is just as personal a movie as any of Scorsese's works about Italian-American gangsters. HUGO is both a technical and emotional achievement, a gorgeous movie that I can see every age audience member getting something different from. Younger viewers will enjoy the 3D wizardry and adventure story, while older coots like myself will get dizzy from the director's celebratory approach to discussing some of the oldest cinema in existence. I loved it even during its slower sections, and it's tough to image anyone who loves movies not embracing HUGO.
