Review of Hugo, starring Asa Butterfield, Chloe Grace Moretz, Jude Law and Ben Kingsley.
One would have to have a particularly sharp eye and see all the 3-D films of the last few years back-to-back to really judge whether or not Hugo makes the best use of 3-D since Avatar. It’s certainly one of the best – so many films have been routinely put out in 3-D to capitalize on the trend (and converted from their original format) that it’s hard to remember anymore what movies were in 3-D and what movies weren’t. It can be said though that Hugo makes the best use of 3-D within “the real world” (as in a recognizable world with human beings in a real city with no animated creatures running around). And Martin Scorsese is certainly the most significant filmmaker to do a 3-D movie since James Cameron.
Scorsese captures our attention right away – with a 3-D snowfall that makes us feel like we’re within a snow globe and a long tracking shot of a Parisian train station in the 1930s. The shot makes terrific use of 3-D but is also the first step in bringing the movie full circle artistically (you’ll get it at the end). The train station is home to Hugo (Asa Butterfield), an orphan who lives secretly in its tunnels and storage areas, keeping the clocks wound and running on time without anyone knowing it. It’s also where Scorsese gets his best 3-D shots – moving his camera in and out of long passageways and capitalizing on the intricacies of each clock’s wheels and gears.
Hugo lives alone there – his uncle has vanished and his parents long dead. He has one thing to remember his father by – an automaton (we’d call it a robot in a movie that takes place after the 1930s) that the two of them worked on together. It’s missing some parts, but supposedly when it works, it can write. And Hugo can’t help but feel if it wrote something, it’d be a message from his father. Hugo gets involved with “Papa George” (Ben Kingsley) who runs a magic shop at the station and his goddaughter Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz). Papa has a fascination with Hugo’s notebook and keeps him at an antagonistic distance. Isabelle becomes Hugo’s friend and helps him try and figure out what Papa George’s problem is.
Butterfield is a good little actor who can break your heart at the right time, and Moretz, who played the ultra-violent Hit Girl in Kick-Ass is an old-fashioned throwback to wide-eyed innocents of classic movies. It all sounds a little pretentious, but that’s offset at times by the humor of Sacha Baron Cohen as the inspector chasing orphans out of the station. Kids will latch on to their cat-and-mouse game.
As the mystery of the automaton unfolds, fans of film will love what it reveals. Scorsese works in a history lesson that covers everything from Harold Lloyd hanging from a clock tower to a famous photo of an 1895 Parisian train wreck to the iconic image of a rocket in the eye of the moon in the seminal A Trip to the Moon. Film buffs will marvel at what’s ultimately Scorsese’s tribute to the birth of movie-making and will appreciate how one of the greatest filmmakers of all time has taken modern movie technology to create a work of art that pays tribute to the classics.
Kids, on the other hand, may just feel suckered. Hugo is marketed as a big holiday family film, and with its railroad 3-D imagery, families may be anticipating some kind of cross between Harry Potter and The Polar Express. The forty-something adult that watched the movie can’t help but think the kids’ eyes will gloss over as soon as they discover the mystery/adventure has tricked them into a history lesson. With no new animated monsters or special effects to liven things up, one gets used to the 3-D after awhile, no matter how well shot.
Scorsese – the mastermind behind violent masterpieces like Raging Bull and GoodFellas – has said he wanted to finally make a movie his kids could see. And he certainly did. But be warned – he made it for his kids, and it’s pretty well focused on showing his kids the things that fascinated him as a boy. It’s a masterwork of art by a great artist – that pays tribute to some other pioneering artists. But you have to be into that sort of thing.