Martin Scorsese must have a lot to live up to. He is revered by critics, by his peers and by audiences, and you would be hard pressed to find any respectable 'Greatest Movies Ever' list that did not include at least one of his films. And so it comes as a surprise that not only has he made a family film, but that it seems to be the film that is closest to his own heart. Scorsese is a cinephile, and Hugo is a cinephile's delight. It's a heartfelt love letter to the mechanics and history of cinema, but one that works equally well as a family adventure film. Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) is a young boy who lives in the walls of a Paris train station, where he has maintained the clocks and tried to repair an old automaton ever since his father died. After angering the elderly owner of a toy stall in the station (Ben Kingsley), Hugo and the stall owner's goddaughter Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz) slowly discover that this morose old man is none other than Georges Melies, the great cinematic pioneer. Together they decide to unlock the secret of his past and his connection to Hugo's automaton.
The film is visually stunning, with an almost herculean amount of effort put into the tiniest of details (look out for 'cameos' from Django Reinhardt, Salvador Dali and James Joyce in the station), but it's technical prowess never overshadows it's human elements. Asa Butterfield is disarmingly good as the titular Hugo, considering his young age, but it's Kingsley who really shines. He plays Melies with the tragic grandeur of a toppled ruler; a sad, crippled husk of a man unable to keep up with the changing world around him. It couldn't be further from the unashamedly creepy performance he gave in Shutter Island, Scorsese's last film. Also worthy of note is the pleasure in seeing Christopher Lee in a charmingly nice role as a kindly bookshop owner. Even Sacha Baron Cohen's antagonistic station inspector manages to be more than a two dimensional caricature; the metal leg brace that could have been merely a villainous gimmick becoming a delicate reminder of very real weakness and vulnerability.
The film is visually stunning, with an almost herculean amount of effort put into the tiniest of details (look out for 'cameos' from Django Reinhardt, Salvador Dali and James Joyce in the station), but it's technical prowess never overshadows it's human elements. Asa Butterfield is disarmingly good as the titular Hugo, considering his young age, but it's Kingsley who really shines. He plays Melies with the tragic grandeur of a toppled ruler; a sad, crippled husk of a man unable to keep up with the changing world around him. It couldn't be further from the unashamedly creepy performance he gave in Shutter Island, Scorsese's last film. Also worthy of note is the pleasure in seeing Christopher Lee in a charmingly nice role as a kindly bookshop owner. Even Sacha Baron Cohen's antagonistic station inspector manages to be more than a two dimensional caricature; the metal leg brace that could have been merely a villainous gimmick becoming a delicate reminder of very real weakness and vulnerability.
It is of course impossible to discuss the film without mentioning it's use of 3D. Several critics have put forward the most compelling theory as to why the 3D works in this case; that in a film about the mechanics of cinema, the 3D is drawing attention to itself as an alienation device. I have always found that 3D simply looks like lots of 2D images stacked on top of each other, but whereas this reduces the effect of most films, in Hugo it actually gave the film the look of an old Melies film. The film is so brilliantly made that it will work perfectly well in 2D, but even I have to begrudgingly admit that Scorsese has done a pretty good job with the third dimension. Hugo is the type of film that reminds you why you fell in love with cinema in the first place. It's a beautifully crafted valentine to cinema itself, and it's pure self indulgence on Scorsese's part, but his evident delight and wonder is infectious.
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