Hugo (2011)
Jan. 30th, 2012 11:13![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladyHugo. Dir. Martin Scorsese, 2011.
This is a very good movie, but even though it's about a child I'm not actually sure whether it's for children, and also, the reason it got an Oscar nom for Best Picture is because (like The Artist) it looks back on the earliest era of cinema with wonder-tinted glasses. Rightfully so, for the art and life of George Méliès is an important part of this movie's plot, but way to be predictable, Academy.
So, yes. The title character is a young boy whose clockmaker father dies and whose drunken lout of an uncle leaves him after teaching him how to maintain the clocks in one of Paris's major train stations, and in between dodging the stationmaster's dog and cages for children awaiting transport to the orphanage, Hugo is trying to cadge enough bits of clockwork to complete the automaton that his father brought home from a museum before his untimely death. The automaton is his only friend, and his attempts to repair it bring him into contact with an irascible old toymaker and his god-daughter, an orphan like Hugo. The automaton and the toymaker are both connected with Georges Méliès, the early wunderkind of silent film whose movies were largely lost by the end of the first world war, and with the pain of being an artist whose works have all been destroyed and forgotten.
What makes me think that this movie isn't for kids (despite the comedic relief, turned grimly serious, of Sacha Baron Cohen's station master with a bum, part-clockwork leg) is how bloody sad it is. All of the characters are broken in their own ways, and it's a winter's tale, shot mostly in various cold tones of blue and white. Over and over and over Hugo is told, thinks, believes that there is no place for him in the world, that there is no one who loves him, that he is completely cut off from all human sympathy, and only at the last possible instant does anything happen to definitively prove otherwise. Both Méliès (played masterfully by Ben Kingsley) and Hugo do find a measure of the grace that comes of second chances, but the glorious montage-homages to Méliès' movies can't quite paper over the very real abyss that the film dances around.
The movie is based on a book by Brian Selznick that I haven't read, and I'm not sure, having seen this movie, that I could honestly bear to. I will say, as the budding hipster male cinesnobs whom I followed out of the theater commented, that Scorsese has a masterful touch for integrating 3D into his movie without making it feel cheap; it's the best 3D I've seen since Coraline, for sure, and if every director used 3D as wisely I would be much more reconciled to it.
This is a very good movie, but even though it's about a child I'm not actually sure whether it's for children, and also, the reason it got an Oscar nom for Best Picture is because (like The Artist) it looks back on the earliest era of cinema with wonder-tinted glasses. Rightfully so, for the art and life of George Méliès is an important part of this movie's plot, but way to be predictable, Academy.
So, yes. The title character is a young boy whose clockmaker father dies and whose drunken lout of an uncle leaves him after teaching him how to maintain the clocks in one of Paris's major train stations, and in between dodging the stationmaster's dog and cages for children awaiting transport to the orphanage, Hugo is trying to cadge enough bits of clockwork to complete the automaton that his father brought home from a museum before his untimely death. The automaton is his only friend, and his attempts to repair it bring him into contact with an irascible old toymaker and his god-daughter, an orphan like Hugo. The automaton and the toymaker are both connected with Georges Méliès, the early wunderkind of silent film whose movies were largely lost by the end of the first world war, and with the pain of being an artist whose works have all been destroyed and forgotten.
What makes me think that this movie isn't for kids (despite the comedic relief, turned grimly serious, of Sacha Baron Cohen's station master with a bum, part-clockwork leg) is how bloody sad it is. All of the characters are broken in their own ways, and it's a winter's tale, shot mostly in various cold tones of blue and white. Over and over and over Hugo is told, thinks, believes that there is no place for him in the world, that there is no one who loves him, that he is completely cut off from all human sympathy, and only at the last possible instant does anything happen to definitively prove otherwise. Both Méliès (played masterfully by Ben Kingsley) and Hugo do find a measure of the grace that comes of second chances, but the glorious montage-homages to Méliès' movies can't quite paper over the very real abyss that the film dances around.
The movie is based on a book by Brian Selznick that I haven't read, and I'm not sure, having seen this movie, that I could honestly bear to. I will say, as the budding hipster male cinesnobs whom I followed out of the theater commented, that Scorsese has a masterful touch for integrating 3D into his movie without making it feel cheap; it's the best 3D I've seen since Coraline, for sure, and if every director used 3D as wisely I would be much more reconciled to it.
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Date: 2012-01-30 19:59 (UTC)