Review: 7/10 Can of Whoop Ass
Hugo
Hugo was an obvious departure for director Martin Scorsese. This is BY FAR the most family-orientated film he has ever directed (only ONE PERSON dies on screen!). But beyond taming down the explicitness, Scorsese also departs from his usual character-driven story telling to embrace three-dimensional techniques, which are geared more towards creating a setting and exploiting action sequences. Interestingly, Scorsese uses new film technology as a platform to proselytize and champion the preservation of film history, with the new supporting the old. Scorsese seems to believe that the capabilities of the future are the exact means of appreciating and preserving the past. And in this, he may be right. Several times, the film successfully shows that while the techniques have evolved, the medium of film is based around an inalterable truth: that film is artistic magic geared towards the realization of dreams. Embracing this charming idea, Hugo is a valid argument for cinematic magnificence. Still, as a singular movie experience, because the film is such an obvious vehicle for expressing Scorsese’s love for moving pictures, the narrative is flat and unaffecting.
The story is as unlikely as the techno-magic that makes film possible. Hugo (played by a whimpering Asa Butterfield) is an orphan living in the walls of a train station. His father (played in a brief cameo by Jude Law) was a clockmaker, so Hugo continues that tradition by winding all the clocks for the immense train station. But Hugo’s main purpose is to fix an automaton his father found before he died (when he was inexplicably killed by a random museum fire), but to do so, Hugo catches grief from shop owner/ex-filmmaker George Melies (played with unwarranted despair by Ben Kingsley) and the station inspector (played by Sasha Baron Cohen, who offers much-needed moments of lightness). Hugo does receive help from Isabelle (played by Chloe Moretz, who is much too tall for her counterpart), a girl he meets at the station mostly by accident. And that’s the biggest problem with the story: it seems too fortuitous. Hugo just happens to be working on an automaton that his father just so happened to find at a museum that just so happened to be the museum Melies donated his robot to and Melies just so happens to now own a shop in the train station Hugo lives at. Further, Isabelle just happens to be wearing the key Hugo needs to make the automaton work, having been gifted the key by Melies’ wife.
The automaton (which would be considered downright creepy if not for the accompaniment of accordion-laden Parisian background music) turns out to be a let down for Hugo, as it can’t offer a message from his father, but it isn’t a dead end. The automaton reveals Melies’ past in the film industry, which Hugo and Isabelle discover he was a very important part of. So the crux of the story switches from whether or not Hugo will get the automaton to work to the mystery behind why Melies stopped making movies. But when that reason is finally revealed, it’s barely glossed over: the world went to war and no one liked his movies anymore. That’s it. It’s such an unsatisfying resolution to the story and motives behind the Melies character that it practically renders the character a useless portal by which to show constant montages of old film reel. The story meanders around for close to two hours, filling in the characters and details of the plot, only to drop everything and obsess over the power of film until the conclusion. Hugo changes from a story to a history lesson (at best an art lesson).
Visually, Scorsese makes great use of 3D. The train station is a lively and completely realized world unto itself. It is the literal “complete machine” Hugo speaks of, composed of an infinite number of moving parts. There are a few too many instances of Hugo bumping into large people as he moves through a crowd, which got nauseating after a while, but Hugo’s behind-the-scenes passageways of clocks and gears is stunning. The visual power of the film fits perfectly with the theme it espouses: that moving pictures can create magic. More importantly, that film is an extension of dreams, and in that way, is accessible to all.
A critical section of the film is when Hugo is dreaming. In his original dream, he finds himself on the tracks of the station, in the way of a speeding train. The train misses Hugo, but barrels through the station, destroying much of the beautiful setting we have become comfortable with over the course of the movie. Hugo quickly wakes up, confirming it was just a dream. The sequence is an example of the endless possibility of film: not only can Scorsese create a completely new world on the screen, he can smash it to bits just as quickly. But the dream isn’t over. Hugo pulls down his shirt to find himself composed of the same machinery as the automaton. In this moment, Hugo is acknowledging his fictional construction, and the strange thing is that when he dreams that he is a robot, it feels less real than the rest of the movie, during which Hugo is a normal boy. But Hugo isn’t a normal boy. He’s a character in a movie. Hugo’s dream within a dream is an example of the way only film can make someone suspend their disbelief. It positions films as indecipherable from dreams. Film’s real magic, in this way, is in the power of persuasion or the power of illusion: passing off artificiality as reality.
And this is nothing new for film. Hugo
and Isabelle read about the first ever
film, called something like “Train entering the station”,
and they mock the
idea that people were diving out of the way when they first saw it,
thinking
the train was going to come through the screen.
But minutes later, Scorsese delivers a harrowing scene in
three-dimensions of a train actually coming through the screen,
giving
modern audiences the same experience movie-goers got over a hundred
years ago. Scorsese sees nothing new in
what film does;
only a progression of technique.
Above all, Scorsese argues that film deserves respect for its ability not only to entertain, but to offer perspective. True, the plot and characters of Hugo are a little flat and superficial, but even the idea that you could invite a viewer to see a world in which a boy lives in a train station, operating giant clocks, in Paris – well, such an accomplishment means that film is nothing to take for granted. The small gripes we have with films are nothing compared to the sheer wonder of film. Scorsese celebrates the consisten triumph of film, and Hugo is a fitting tribute to his craft.
But stepping back from these impressive thematic
elements, the movie does have faults.
The acting is unnecessarily dramatic for the things at stake:
who cries
that much over a broken robot? The
character of Isabelle serves almost no narrative purpose, nor really
does the
automaton, who is supposed to connect Hugo and Melies,
even though they already knew each other from the station.
And the message of the film is absolutely
HAMMERED home over the last half hour.
There are endless montages of ancient films and nods to things
in film
history I’ll never understand.
Everything feels a bit heavy-handed (Scorsese even makes a cameo
behind
a camera, in case you didn’t understand that this is a movie
about making
movies). Hugo is so overt in its
intent that its lack of subtlety erases some of the “film
magic” the movie is a
proponent of.
As
an extended
essay about film appreciation and as an example of 3D done right, Hugo
is
thought-provoking and interesting. But
no one could call it moving. No one
could call it even memorable, if not for the vague notion that films in
general
are really amazing. The things the film
has to say about film are powerful messages; but no message warrants
the
absolute disavowal of plot and character.
Film didn’t become great when we put enough pictures
together to create
the illusion of movement. Film became
great when we used that illusion to tell a story.