“If you’ve ever wondered where your dreams come from, you look around… this is where they’re made.”
Martin Scorsese is the epitome of a film nerd. If you look at his filmography and study his movies you may be fooled into typecasting (or whatever the director version of that word is) him as a certain kind of filmmaker, but the truth of the matter is that he’s a lot more versatile than that. He also has a much bigger message he loves to remind us all of from time to time.
Hugo while at first being about this boy who’s an outside observer of the world inside this train station in Paris slowly becomes about a relationship that he ends up developing with this estranged toy shop owner (Ben Kingsley) with his own dark past that haunts him.
The character of Hugo (Asa Butterfield) is that of the curious child character who you respect because of his talents in certain fields, in this case machinery and clockwork, and at very same time sympathize with because of his lack of opportunity to develop in every other aspect of life. Thanks the toy shop owner and his goddaughter, Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz), they’re able to challenge Hugo’s own limitations and make him come out of his shell into the great mysterious world.
The crux of the film rests on what connects all the main characters in the film, that is the automaton that Hugo is fixing in memory of his father. The mystery of what this complicated machine is meant for other than to bewilder even the most skilled clockmaker. When the film finally gets around to solving the mystery of what this automaton does, we’re then introduced to the main mystery of the film, which is: who is this shop owner?
[MINOR SPOILER] Soon enough we discover that this man, the shop owner is George Méliès, a man who’s well known as the man who showed the world that narrative could be told through films. [/MINOR SPOILER]
The film plays into the wheel house of all of the film enthusiasts out there. Rather than debate the merit of a film (and yes that is brought up constantly; the merit not the debate) we should look to preserve it. Films are a weird piece of art that allows us to display the most elusive dream is such a concrete manner to be shown to the world for interpretation and consumption. When that is lost it is the world that loses out. So while the fans of Nolan, Carpenter, Lucas, Spielberg, Landis, Hitchcock, Ford and all the others are great to be seen, why not fans of the original filmmakers. The people who were just figuring out how to use the medium to tell these stories that today we complain about their triteness.
What this film does to the highest degree, and I wish to applaud it for doing so, is disguise itself as a children’s film so as to introduce the youth of today to this side of cinema. It presents these movies rather than the vegetables on the plate that you may be forcing your five year old to eat as this grand mysterious adventure of a film. It’s downright gorgeous and gives the greatest gift of revitalizing the conversation about educating the masses of this origin of the art form that we all love so much.
Scorsese’s use of 3D at the same time speaks wonders. Not only is it the best use of 3D so far but it also adds to that discussion about the evolution of filmmaking. As we’re discussing the origins at the same time we’re witnessing the latest development that many (including myself) have titled as a fad that will die quickly. While I have yet to believe that it won’t die a horrendous death, I do believe that if truly gifted filmmakers, like Scorsese, are able to use to medium to its advantage and show the world what you can do with it, then we’re going to see a shift in public opinion and everyone is going to finally head out and drop a couple thousand on the latest 3D televisions.