Review: Hugo

Set in Paris in the 1930s, the title character (played by Asa Butterfield) is a young boy who lives in hiding in and around a Parisian train station. His father (Jude Law) and drunk uncle (Ray Winstone) are both dead, with the latter having been in charge of the giant clock in the station. Now Hugo sees it as his responsibility, as well as trying to repair the Automaton, one of the only possessions his late his father left behind. Hugo’s life changes when he is caught stealing some spare parts from Georges (Sir Ben Kingsley), a toymaker who owns a store inside the large station. The rather grumpy Georges is terse with the boy and also confiscates his notebook, a cherished possession his father left behind, containing his drawings/designs of the Automaton. Hugo makes a connection with Georges’ beret-sporting young niece (Chloe Grace Moritz), and in searching for Hugo’s notebook, they make some startling discoveries about the old shopkeeper. He may in fact be the one and only Georges Méliès, renowned cinematic pioneer, now reduced to being a tortured, embittered old man. Meanwhile, Hugo also has to keep a lookout for the humourless station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), who doesn’t like loiterers, and wants to send Hugo to an orphanage, a fate even his sour uncle seemed to want to save the boy from. Helen McCrory plays Mama Jeanne, Georges’ wife, who wants nothing more than for her husband to be happy again. Emily Mortimer turns up as a florist who turns the nasty station inspector into a pussy cat. Richard Griffiths is hilarious in a very thankless role as a newsagent sweet on a cafe owner with a dog that just HATES him. Christopher Lee plays kindly bookseller Monsieur Labisse.

 

First things first: I saw this in 2D, because that’s how we’ll all be seeing films eventually, so why bother seeing something with an artificial and extraneous third dimension? Sorry, but no one is going to change my mind about it, and I’m not being a stick in the mud, I’m being realistic.

 

Based on the trailers, knowing that director Martin Scorsese (“Mean Streets”, “Raging Bull”, “Goodfellas”, “Shine a Light”) is a fan of “The Magic Box” as much as I am (and indeed the film is somewhat influenced by that 1951 all-star British biopic of forgotten cinematic pioneer William Friese-Greene), I had expected this 2011 film to be almost certainly atop my Best Films of the Year list. That it isn’t, does not really reflect poorly on the film, which is actually nice, sweet, and nostalgic in a much less pretentious way than say Woody Allen’s egotistical “Midnight in Paris”. It’s not the great film I was expecting, but you can’t hate it. In fact, you want to hug it. How many Scorsese films can you say that about? I mean, Christopher Lee is in it, and even he is playing a kindly old bookseller expressing the wonderment and joy of reading. It’s one of his rare good-guy roles, and he’s terrific, getting more dialogue and screen time than in most of his recent films combined, it seems. And if you know anything about Lee, the idea of him playing a book-lover is awfully cute and totally appropriate. I bet he thoroughly enjoyed himself working on this, too.

 

Like “Midnight in Paris”, there’s lots of name-dropping here. In addition to the slight resemblance to “The Magic Box”, the opening scenes feature set design and architecture clearly inspired by “Metropolis”, and real-life film pioneer Georges Méliès (played here by Sir Ben Kingsley) plays a major part in the film, as do his films. But it’s not mere name-dropping, Scorsese and writer John Logan (“Sweeney Todd”, “The Last Samurai”, and “Rango”, still number one on my top 10 of 2011) actually bother to tell a story, based on an illustrated novel by Brian Selznick. It might be set in 1930s Paris, but it’s no nostalgia-fest, wank job postcard, either, nor does he suggest that mechanical clocks are vastly superior to Broadband internet and cries out for a return to the 20s, like “The Artist” (a fun film, no doubt) kinda did. Scorsese makes sure that you can enjoy this film by not beating you over the head with how much of a baguette-eating smarty-pants he is. You don’t need to be a film buff to enjoy the film, as Scorsese doesn’t throw it in your face, but it helps if you’ve seen “Metropolis” and “A Trip to the Moon” at least.

 

The film is totally unlike anything Scorsese has attempted in terms of story, tone, and look (it seems more like a Terry Gilliam film, only a bit more mainstream), and yet from seeing Scorsese in interviews and in documentaries, it feels like it captures the cinephile in him. It sits somewhere in between a kids movie and a movie for adults, and although moving a little slowly, the reverence for the Silent Era and early cinema is more effective here than in “The Artist”. I would’ve liked the film to have been set in maybe the 40s instead (isn’t it too early to be nostalgic about the Silent Era in the 20s when “A Trip to the Moon” was made in 1902?), but Méliès died in 1938, so it probably wouldn’t have worked any other way.

 

The best scenes are easily the ones where we see Méliès at work on his films, which are just wonderful. As I said, there’s a bit of “The Magic Box” in this, except with Méliès instead of William Friese-Greene, though Kingsley’s Méliès suggests what the Friese-Greene of “The Magic Box” might’ve been like had he been forced to give up his dream to keep his family fed. If indeed Méliès’ films were mostly burned and turned into shoe heels, that’s so incredibly sad. If you haven’t seen “The Magic Box” (starring the greatest actor who ever lived, Robert Donat), Marty and I implore you to do so. Friese-Greene doesn’t even rate a mention when one person suggests that ‘The Lumiere Brothers had invented the movies’. However, Scorsese’s own cameo (a definite homage to “The Magic Box”) suggests he knows very well what Mr. Friese-Greene’s contribution was. The Lumiere’s are much more famous, and so adding Friese-Greene and Thomas Edison to the story would be unnecessarily complicating things anyway.

 

The film looks incredible, even if the film’s cinematographer Robert Richardson (“Platoon”, “JFK”, “Shine a Light”) is a tad too reliant on yellow lighting for my liking (Lights do tend to be yellow, but they don’t tend to make everything else in the room entirely yellow, from my experience. But if you’ve read my rants...er...reviews before, you’re already aware of my opinion on the subject). The colour palette is otherwise very interesting, muted but not monochromatic, with lots of yellows, blues, and browns, and a lovely attention to detail. A cross between Dickensian, Orwellian, Parisian, and Lumiere-esque is the best way I can describe it. It’s a storybook look, which is quite apt given its literary origins. The set design is beautifully hyperreal. This isn’t really France, it’s Scorsese’s interpretation of France through cinema’s past. That doesn’t mean it’s a soulless shopping list of references, it has a story to tell, but it also doesn’t mean that the film can’t be enjoyed on a cinephilic level too. The “‘Allo, ‘Allo” music score by Howard Shore (“The Lord of the Rings” films, “Panic Room”) and the entire wardrobe given to young Moretz grate on one a bit (was that striped shirt a tribute to Marcel Marceau?), but other than that, it’s charmingly nostalgic, minus most of the pretension.

 

The film is also a must for tinkerers and people fascinated by doohickies and thingamajigs. Mr. Scorsese seems a touch enamoured with young Asa Butterfield’s big eyes, but I can see why. Butterfield, who was in the excellent “The Boy with the Striped Pyjamas” is fine in the lead role. However, as the film becomes more about Méliès in the second half, I feel that the title character actually gets a bit lost. Chloe Grace Moretz is actually really terrific here, and strangely enough, she showed more sexual ambiguity here to me than in the very disappointing “Let Me In” (The Americanised remake of the slightly less disappointing “Let the Right One In”). Her British accent is also practically faultless, a job well-done there. She’s so much more interesting in this, no doubt about it. Ben Kingsley is terrific in one of his rare attempts to give a genuinely good performance. The guy is one of the best actors in the world when he wants to be, and his grumpy, rather tortured performance is both amusingly humourless and quite affecting. The most interesting casting choice is comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, whose look and performance suggest a cross between Lionel Atwill in “Son of Frankenstein” and the guy with the dodgy accent from “‘Allo, ‘Allo” who was always trying to fool the Nazis (His face and costume are almost dead-on, actually). I thought for sure Cohen was going to say ‘Good Moaning’ at any given moment. Cohen actually has an outrageous accent of his own here. In playing a Frenchman, he has adopted a bizarre cockney accent. Some found him miscast, I found him hilarious whenever he opened his mouth. The accent, appropriate or not, is very funny. Furthermore, his character is actually really interesting, and ultimately even a bit sympathetic. It’s one of the few times I’ve actually liked Cohen’s work.

 

The one real flaw with the film is one that I really shouldn’t be talking about given I saw the 2D version. Still, if you make a film in 3D you first need to make sure it works in 2D, as it’s how we’ll be viewing it forever more. Well, the film does work in 2D, I can’t deny that. However, the use of 3D is completely obvious, distracting, and in my view, makes the experience a bit lesser. Sure, I wouldn’t notice it if I were watching it in 3D, but like I said, none of us will likely be watching it in 3D outside of the cinemas in years to come, so that argument doesn’t hold weight. And sadly, there are some CGI flames that look a lot more dodgy in 2D than they probably did in 3D. Scorsese is a smart man and is better than that. I’m particularly disappointed that Scorsese has resorted to throwing things at the screen. It’s so unnecessary and so very beneath a filmmaker of Scorsese’s standing, intelligence, and talent. I know that in one scene it’s used to give the audience the sensation of a train coming at them, ala the famous stories regarding one of cinema’s first films. One scene doesn’t justify the whole thing, though, and these filmmakers are basically leaving stains on their films that will likely never be erased.

 

Overall, I don’t know whether this will appeal to a wide audience of kids and/or adults, so much as small pockets of either camp (I’m sure there are some kids out there who are cinema buffs, I became interested in movies relatively early myself), but I don’t judge a film solely based on who it appeals to, as it really only matters whether I liked it, and if I think it will appeal to others, that’s a bonus. This is a charming fantasy film in my opinion, and it’s a must for film buffs and historians at the very least. However, I honestly don’t think you need to be up on your cinema history to enjoy what is a lovely story in its own right. It’s not a great film, and I’m disappointed in Scorsese’s adoption of the latest cinematic fads, but it’s hard not to enjoy this very sweet and interesting film.

 

Rating: B-