Hugo

Synopsis: Hugo (Asa Butterfield) is an orphan living in a Paris railway station. He lives inside its walls and keeps its clocks running while stealing wind up toys from a shop in the arcade. He needs them to fix an automaton he believes holds a message from his dead father (Jude Law). But when he’s caught by the shopkeeper, Papa George (Ben Kingsley), he ends up befriending George’s goddaughter, Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz) who helps him unravel the mystery of the automaton.

Hugo is a gorgeously designed, beautifully shot, well acted and expertly directed film. You’d expect nothing less than that from Scorsese. But I was scratching my head for roughly a third of the film, wondering what about this sweet but insubstantial fantasy could have grabbed his attention. And then the penny dropped, and everything made sense. But it leaves me with a conundrum: most of the criticism I want to make of the film involves giving away the big reveal. So, if you haven’t seen it, know this, it’s worth seeing, and the 3D is, I’m told, spectacular. (I didn’t see it in 3D, but you can tell from the framing how smart it would be),  Go see it, then come back for the rest of this.

Did you go? Good fun, wasn’t it?

Right.

It’s not really a film for kids, is it? It’s a longtime cineaste indulging in a bit of hero worship. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but the rest of the story gets a bit short shrift once we know he’s George Méliès, don’t you think? For all the loving attention devoted to reconstructing some of Méliès’ most impressive films and telling the story of his fall from grace, I can’t help but wish the same level of focus had been brought to Hugo’s story. Where exactly did he get the idea that the automaton would have a message for him? Probably because he’s grieving his dead father and trying to find meaning in life, but you never really get the sense of that. And it’s always a bad sign when a main character has to explain his motivation just before the scene where it comes to fruition. It pretty much admits there were no scenes to establish how truly lost and alone Hugo felt. And what about the Station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) and his awkward romance of the Flower Girl (Emily Mortimer)?  It started off kinda cute, but after he shows a really dark side to himself, dragging Hugo off in front to her consternation, you’d think there’d be a speed bump to the romance. Apparently not, immediately her dismay is forgotten and she comforts him as he is defeated in his villainy. Hugo’s dream sequence seemed a cute irrelevance too.

If this was genuinely a film for children, the focus of the story would have been about Hugo, not Méliès. And it starts off looking that way, and tries to return to it at the end. But the middle is all about the great filmmaker while Hugo sits passively and learns about the wonders of cinema. The subject matter is Oscar material, but I really wish the script had been tighter, that the stories of the different characters were given more weight than whimsy, and that Hugo was better developed as a character lost in the world. It wouldn’t have taken much to get him there, so much is already in the performance, and it just needed a scene or two to get it over the line. But really, for Scorsese, Hugo is just the means by which a great master of the cinema can be returned to his glory. So whilst the result is a gorgeous and enjoyably nostalgic film, I feel a bit ripped off on behalf of Hugo, the character. His story and his struggles are interesting too and they should have been given a bit more time in a film bearing his name.

Still, it was a lot of fun, wasn’t it?

 

 

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