7/27/2023 0 Comments 2011 clockmaker movie![]() Isabelle is, in more ways than one, Hugo’s missing piece, although the romance is strictly and appropriately PG (hand-holding and eye-goggling). They have ripping good fun running through the station (where most of the action takes place), sneaking into movies, and nosing about the local film library. The two join forces in an attempt to discover the connection between Hugo’s automaton and Isabelle’s Papa Georges (who the children soon find out is Georges Méliès). The movie maintains this sense of intimacy throughout, and the adventure is indeed a shared experience, especially with the introduction of Hugo’s first ally, Isabelle (played by Chloë Grace Moretz). Although he is living alone in the very clockwork of the station-accompanied only by a strange automaton (his sole remaining connection to his deceased father)-the viewer is now witness to his beautiful life among his mechanical devices, as well as to his more tragic life in the world of his fellow men. ![]() This involvement is undiminished as Hugo, the eternally lonely orphan, is being chased through the train station by the station inspector (played more comically than menacingly by Sacha Baron Cohen). The boy appears as a face peeking through the number “4” on an immense and immaculate gold clock, and the viewer is suddenly running alongside him, a companion to Hugo’s mischief and mystery. Hugo begins with a scene that propels the viewer into Paris, immediately giving one the sensation of a magical flight through the City of Lights. None of this, however, changes the fact that the film is one for the still young 3D canon. Had such concerns been better conveyed in Hugo, we might have gotten a piece that incontrovertibly bound its characters together, rather than one that loosely connects them to serve the plot’s other purposes. ![]() Hugo is a story about artistic purpose by a filmmaker whose best movies are concerned with destiny. However, those characters and plots-so often brought together with a sense of urgency and unavoidable fate ( The Departed and Gangs of New York, for example)-are more casually linked in his first PG-rated film. ![]() As a director known to tell a complex story with intertwining characters of distinctly different pasts and presents, Hugo is undeniably a Scorsese picture. With such great material (perhaps even too much), it is unfortunate that the actual story driving the film does not come together in typical Scorsesian fashion. Alongside Hugo’s tale is the true story of Georges Méliès (Ben Kingsley), one of the world’s first filmmakers. He retells the story of a boy (Hugo Cabret, played by Asa Butterfield) in search of a way to complete his father’s work. In his adaptation of Brian Selznick’s novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Scorsese weaves together his many passions and concerns: for art, for film, and for fathers and father-figures. With Hugo, director Martin Scorsese has created a dazzling, wondrous experience, an undeniable visual masterpiece. ![]()
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