Hugo, based on a
children story by Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, the
screenplay having been written by John Logan, a departure in Martin Scorsese's
oeuvre, admirably captures the illusion of the grain of life in an enclosed
environment such as a busy Parisian train station just after the
Great War. As such, it is an old fashioned children story, like those
we told to our children when putting them to bed, as once upon a time we had the
time and energy to do so (if this was ever true I do not know, but it
is nice to hold to the idea that it was), told using cutting edge 3D
cinematic technology. Has Scorsese advanced the range of this
technology for artistic use in contemporary cinema? The jury is out
on this one, although I have my doubts. I do think that Hugo
could well had been shot in a conventional 2D format without any
detrimental effect on the quality of the story telling.
Perhaps, it could had worked even better, as I felt that on occasions the
technology got on the way of the story itself, almost as if Scorsese,
like a kid playing with a new set of coloured pens, got so enthralled
with 3D for its own sake that he overlooked the story.
The film follows the
story of a boy, the above mentioned Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield,
whom we saw in The Boy in the Stripped Pyjamas), who lives in the railway station after been taken in by his uncle after the death of his
father in a fire at the museum where he worked. The uncle, a
drunkard, also disappeared one day, and Hugo keeps with the task of keeping all the clocks of the station running on time, that was his
uncle's job, as he fears he will be taken to an orphanage if he is
discovered by the awful station master (a rather magnificent
portrayal by Sacha Baron Cohen), a war veteran with a penchant for
grabbing street urchins.
The key of the film,
and I am playing with words here, is a key he needs to unlock the
mechanism of an automaton in his possession, as he believes that it
will write a message from his father, who left it to him after his
death. The search for this key sets Hugo in a sharp collision with
Georges Méliès
(a rather cartoonish portrayal by Ben Kingsley, a bit of a rehash of
his performance in Gandhi), an old gentleman who owns a toy booth in the station.
After his father's sketchbook falls in the hands of
Méliès,
who suspects that Hugo has been nicking bits and bits from his
stall, he manages to enlist the help of Méliès' granddaughter, young Isabelle (a fabulous and sensitive performance
by Chloë
Grace Moretz), to recover the book, as he needs it to bring the automaton
back to life. Isabelle is also an orphan, being brought up by Grandpa
George and his wife after her parents died in an accident, jumps in aid of Hugo, as she is screaming for adventure and danger, as most children at that age living a
sheltered life do.
Hugo
the film is also an ode to cinema itself, to the beginnings of cinema
(Scorsese is also being known for funding the restoration of old and
forgotten films, as my DVD copy of Wojciech Has' marvellous and
intriguing The Saragossa Manuscript in my videoteque testifies), as
we all find, including Isabelle, that Grandpa George is one of the
forgotten pioneers of early cinema, having developed his career
shortly after the Lumière
brothers showed to the public the first movie performance, directing, producing and acting in hundreds of
films, a career cut short by the war. Unable to restart it, he bought
the toy booth for a living, and to raise Isabelle.
Hugo is also one of those rare films which appeals to the young and the old, as it does work on several levels. I suspect that subsequent viewings will bring additional riches to the fore both on the story itself, its background, and the performances.
The
performances of the kids is exceptional, Asa Butterfield conveys
the intensity of the desire of a child to unlock not only the automation but also his own life, his own destiny, whilst Chloë
Moretz' nuanced performance of Isabelle (I understand that
she managed to fool Martin Scorsese in believing she is actually
English during the audition) living in Paris, a girl eager for adventure,
yet who is also a loving and sensitive grand daughter, gets at the
heart of her role with an extraordinary breadth and depth of characterization.
Special
mentions have to go to all those who constructed the sets and worked
in the CGI effects, which created a picture of a Parisian railway
station which is both credible and yet still firmly belonging to the
realm of story telling). I have to say that I am not still convinced
by the 3D technology which, in spite of Scorsese's efforts to tame
it, felt too often as no more than gimmick, distracting me from the
humanity of the story itself.
However,
in spite of my persisting reservations about the technology itself,
Hugo has gone into my long list for the 10 best films I have watched
in 2011, being not only old fashioned story telling at its best, but
also an ode to cinema itself, admirably realized and with an enthralling performances by Asa Butterfield and Chloë Grace Moretz.
To
see the making of Hugo, please click HERE.
Text revised on 15 December 2011.
