To anyone who remains skeptical about 3-D in film, the opening shot alone in Hugo should prove a bracing counterpoint. Beginning with a marvelous view of 1920s Paris, the camera zips along a smooth track inward to a grand Railway Station, follows the length of a platform alongside which trains disgorge passengers, crosses a busy concourse that is part marketplace and part commuter nexus, and culminates on the eyes of a boy peering from behind a clock face. The depth of motion is enhanced by the 3-D, the exhilaration magnified, enough to justify the 3-D twinkle in James Cameron’s eye when the trend for requiring viewers to wear glasses at the movies formally launched with Avatar. Although 3-D has been used beautifully since Cameron’s blockbuster, only one director demonstrated a noteworthy instinct for using 3-D as something more than an easy way to stimulate optic centers; Joseph Kosinski, with Tron: Legacy. The distinction between the 2-D real world and the 3-D computer realm, especially when seen in IMAX, emphasized the way in which 3-D can serve the story conceptually as well as stylistically. With Hugo, Martin Scorsese doesn’t resort to lofty concepts, but pushes the art of 3-D forward with an experience uniquely immersive because of that added third dimension. He wields the camera to deliver a wide range of shots, from close-ups within elaborate mechanisms to rich, panoramic views of a Paris so gorgeous one feels like Sherman stepping out of the Wayback machine. Surpassing Avatar, the 3-D experience becomes such an intrinsic part of watching the movie that the wonder is felt more than thought.
Yet there’s never a feeling that 3-D is the defining feature of the film’s visual experience, in the sense that Scorsese is too much a master of his craft to deliver a film that couldn’t also be enjoyed in two dimensions. His Paris is so rich in detail, from the bricks on the station wall to the rusted metal of an automaton, and his camerawork so engaging in-and-of-itself that the 3-D is not a supplement to an incomplete presentation but a natural extension of the whole, an amplifier. Where the film keeps its heart, rightfully, is in the prudently heartfelt script by John Logan based on Brian Selznick’s book.
Hugo tells the story of a boy whose father has died, which places him in the care of a drunk uncle who leaves him alone to maintain the clocks at the Station. Operating from a lair and darting among mechanisms, machinery and pipes, Asa Butterfield’s disarming Hugo is like a small version of Robert De Niro’s Harry Tuttle in Brazil, a fugitive repairman who performs his job outside the attention of station authorities. When not fixing clocks, he strives to steal parts from a cranky toymaker, played by Ben Kingsley, while avoiding the attentions of a station inspector who, apparently disinterested in deterring real crime, delights in capturing children and having them carted off to the orphanage. The object for which the parts are intended, an automaton his father hoped to fix, becomes the catalyst for a journey of discovery that forges a connection among Hugo, the toymaker and his family.
What a surprise, especially to those of us not acquainted with Brian Selznick’s book, to discover how coyly trailers omitted the film’s agenda. Couched in the presentation of a genial boyhood adventure, a mystery of the kind that leads to treasure, it turns out that Hugo is an ode to the romance of cinema. As this realization hits, a moment of queasiness roils the stomach. Whenever Hollywood decides to send itself a love letter, however obliquely, the risk of teary-eyed reverence risks triggering a gag reflex, especially when indulging misplaced Disney marketing to proclaim a movie set the happiest place on earth and movies as not just movies, but dreams come true. (Eighty-four pompous ceremonies later, and the Academy Awards still can’t celebrate the art of movies without giving the impression of Narcissus admiring his reflection in a pool of water. We can be thankful that, at least, filmmakers don’t suffer from the poet’s distinctive insecurity.)
But Hugo is not a Hollywood love-letter in the self-congratulatory mode, and we can heave a sigh of relief. It is, rather, a personal artistic expression of cinema’s qualities that benefits from Scorsese’s ability to look sentiment in the eyes and win the staring contest. Though warm and emotional, both in its homage and its presentation of a self-contained but hardly insular station society, Hugo is not a maudlin affair – not even when Hugo’s father dies nor when the film peaks with nostalgia and triumph. There’s not even a hint of sap when the station inspector, played with sensitive comedy by Sasha Baron Cohen, is permitted some happiness alongside other characters who provide the station, and story, with personality.
The big picture of it all is that Hugo is, in detail and scope, a beautiful piece of filmmaking that illustrates in craft what it can only hint at through dialogue. Scorsese delivers so many details to please the cinephile – from a small but benevolent role for the ever-charismatic Christopher Lee, to a humane and top-form performance from Ben Kingsley that reminds us why he’s such a pleasure to watch, to period costumes and locations that dare the audience to resist the urge to crawl into the picture frame – that the film itself becomes testament to why we love letting the movies, and rhetoric about the movies, carry us away.
I’m not one to extoll film’s transcendental virtues. But when it comes to film’s aesthetics and ability to engage on a personal level, Martin Scorsese has certainly delivered a project of genuine passion, dignity, and the thrill of a story well told.
Hugo. Screenplay by John Logan, based on the novel “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” by Brian Selznick. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Starring Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz, Emily Mortimer, Ben Kingsley, Jude Law, Sacha Baron Cohen, Ray Winstone, Christopher Lee, Helen McCrory and Michael Stuhlbarg. 130 minutes. MPAA rating: PG (for mild thematic material, some action/peril and smoking).
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