Hugo
DIRECTED BY MARTIN SCORSESE
Until it reveals itself as a rapturous tribute to the magic of movies, Martin Scorsese’s Hugo flirts with mediocrity. Granted, it’s visually marvelous from the first frame, and all the more so in 3D, where Scorsese’s virtuoso tracking shots are lent a tangible depth as they survey a bustling, picture-book 1930s Paris. Narratively, though, Hugo—adapted from an illustrated children’s novel by Brian Selznick—initially fails to compel.
For its opening hour, the plot is the stuff of second-rate Dickens, as we become acquainted with the titular orphan, Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), and his lonely, light-fingered routine as the secret clock keeper of the Gare Montparnasse. His sole companion is a defunct turn-of-the-century automaton which, as a memento of his deceased dad, he’s determined to mend. To that end, he pilfers spare parts from the station’s toy shop, owned by an embittered Ben Kingsley and guarded by Sacha Baron Cohen’s cruel but buffoonish constable.
With his tousled mop and plaintive eyes, Butterfield looks the part, but he lacks charisma and isn’t helped by John Logan’s screenplay, which is populated by generic characters, relies on clumsily manufactured conflict, and resorts to clumsier moments of ineffectual slapstick. Even Chloë Moretz, who’s developed a precocious knack for stealing scenes, strains to enliven Isabelle, goddaughter to Kingsley’s shop owner, whom she calls “Papa Georges.” But when Isabelle befriends Hugo and the duo discover that Papa Georges is actually pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès, Hugo, like its namesake’s clockwork robot, enchantingly clicks into gear.
The catalyst for the transformation is a chance encounter between the children and Michael Stuhlbarg, as a film scholar named René Tabard. An ardent Méliès admirer, Tabard mistakenly believes that the man, like his bankrupt production company, failed to survive the First World War. Hugo and Isabelle inform him of the truth, and he, in turn, takes them (and us) on a whistle-stop tour of cinema’s formative milestones, from the proto-documentaries of the Lumière brothers to Méliès’ own fantastically experimental f/x-driven voyages.
As the obvious bushy-browed stand-in for Scorsese, it’s Tabard, rather than Hugo or Isabelle, who imbues the film with an infectious, childlike sense of wonder. With him on board, Hugo‘s latter half is an impassioned redemption of Kingsley’s Méliès, a celebration of the true Méliès’ wild imagination, and an artful argument for film preservation. It’s also an earnest acknowledgement of the debt owed by Scorsese and his contemporaries to Méliès’ conception of cinema as spectacle, made vividly manifest in Hugo‘s apt, dazzlingly immersive use of 3D.
Far from the inexplicable studio sellout that it once appeared, Hugo may actually alienate audiences looking for a conventional, family-oriented adventure, and in truth is only moderately effective as such. For devoted cinema enthusiasts, however, this $170-million passion project is a charmingly unexpected and exuberantly realized gift.