HUGO (2011)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
Silent films received a much needed shot of adrenaline in 2011. "The Artist," the first silent film since 1989's "Sidewalks of New York," won Best Picture at the Academy Awards and reintroduced a form that has not had many antecedents since the early days of cinema. "Hugo" is also a celebration of that very same time that has been long forgotten, and it is infused with humor, heart and pathos. It will make you swoon with the power of silent cinema.
Based on the inventive multi-media book by Brian Selznick, "The Invention of Hugo Cabret," the film "Hugo" places us squarely in a world that seems ancient and yet so inviting. Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) is an orphan living in a Parisian train station (the Gare Montparnasse) who is trying to find a secret to an automaton he keeps inside his living quarters. Hugo is good at fixing mechanisms, having learned the art of it all from his late father, a clockmaker (Jude Law) who dies in an unfortunate fire. After being cared for by a mean drunk of an uncle (Ray Winstone), a watchmaker who disappears, Hugo is left to his own devices and has to do his uncle's job of maintaining the train station's clocks. Hugo keeps a notepad that has a litany of descriptive drawings of all the intricate mechanisms that make the automaton work. All he needs is a heart-shaped key that winds it up.
Meanwhile, Hugo tries to evade capture from the relentless Station Inspector (a daffy Sacha Baron Cohen) and steals tools and other devices from Papa Georges (a solid Ben Kingsley), a toy shop owner at the train station who is actually the film director Georges Melies. Papas Georges wants to be left alone but he is taken with Hugo and his knack and grasp of mechanisms and rotors and such.
What is miraculous is that Martin Scorsese made this film. Many critics have declared it his most personal work and it might be (he has said his fantastic documentary, "Italianamerican," is his best and most personal work). Scorsese makes it a flight of fancy and wonder, injecting the film with touches of slapstick and providing Hugo with a great deal of subjectivity as in his observation of little vignettes, such as one man who is smitten with a woman despite a snarling dog. The movie also makes us feel Hugo's insular pain and his sweet relationship with another orphan, the adventurous Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), who happens to be Georges' goddaughter. But what really makes the film a work of wonder is seeing the early days of Melies making his own films, such as "A Trip to the Moon," in a glass castle to allow sunlight to peer in. You definitely sense the man's ability to create magic on film and not just on the stage with his parlor tricks (Melies was initially a magician before making films).
This is an extraordinary cast at work here. Asa Butterfield resembles a cross between a young Malcolm McDowell and Daniel Radcliffe (I can only imagine what this kid might have done with the Harry Potter role), exuding all the qualities of a tough, determined urchin who discovers the truth about Papas' identity. Chloe Moretz is an affable personality on screen, a girl who is transfixed by the sight of Harold Lloyd at the movies (well, who wouldn't be) and transfixed by Hugo's situation. Ben Kingsley is one of our national treasures, an actor who delivers every nuance of regret and remorse as you might expect as the elderly Papa Georges. And adding a layer of towering presences is the one and only Christopher Lee as a book shop owner who can't help but elicit a smile when he gives Hugo a French translation of "Robin Hood." Plus there is the small and significant role of fictitious film historian and author Rene Tabard (Michael Stuhlbarg, who currently plays a smooth gambling operator in HBO's "Boardwalk Empire"), who wrote a book about Melies believing that he had died in World War I.
"Hugo" is a movie steeped in the magic of movies (the art design of the station itself is amazing) and in the process of discovery. Between the station inspector's mannered politeness and the choice vignettes of discovered love, the movie is in love with love and with the cinema. It restores in good faith what cinema ultimately was and what it can still be - a place of dreams that can still make you go, "Wow!" Scorsese is at the top of his directorial powers and makes "Hugo" a valentine for the most impassioned filmgoer and cineaste, and it is a masterstroke in the director's inarguably varied career. You'll come away smiling and in a cheery, heartfelt mood, something I never quite expected from Martin Scorsese. Bravo!
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