Hugo (2011)

Directed by Martin Scorsese; produced by Martin Scorsese, Johnny Depp, Tim Headington, Graham King

In 1920s Paris, twelve year old orphan Hugo (Asa Butterfield) lives secretly in the attics and walls of the Montparnasse railway station, keeping the clocks working and on time. Meanwhile he is stealing mechanical parts to repair an automaton left to him by his father (Jude Law). This leads him to meet a bitter old toyshop-owner (Ben Kingsley), an acquaintance that will change the lives of the boy, the man, and all who know them.

A most unusual movie for the director, Hugo is largely child-oriented, with a dose of fantasy, quite removed from Scorsese’s normal realism and human drama. Nonetheless, it is easy to see it as something important to him, for it is in great part a tribute to the early days of his beloved profession, that of making motion pictures.

Yet while that is its goal, I am sure, it takes a long time to reveal it, not mentioning films until almost half-way through its run. That is one of its problems: Hugo seems almost not to know where it is going until it finds its feet – and then it is off and running. Since it was adapted from a very popular book, and seems to have followed the book’s plot closely, the aimlessness of the first part was probably not intended.

The initial hour, dealing with the boy, his first, hostile encounter with Kingsley’s character and the introduction of other habitués of the railway station, is also heavy with computer graphics. I cannot think that Scorsese is at his best in such a milieu; the depictions of giant clocks and gears and pendula are, perhaps, necessary for the atmosphere of machinery and invention, but don’t quite fit with the rest of the movie.

Another problem is the adult characters who, at least as they are first and, admittedly, superficially revealed, are almost uniformly unpleasant. The worst is the station’s resident policeman (Sacha Baron Cohen), a repulsive human being whose war-wound is alternately meant to be the cause of amusement and pity. I suspect that these personalities are intended to show that the world is an untrustworthy and aggressive place for the children, Hugo and his new friend, Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz), who are thrown on to their own resources because of its nature. But, though such a hazardous setting is sometimes very effective for children’s stories (eg. Peter Pan), here, anger and resentment seem to be governing emotions among many of the grown-ups. There is also a rather embarrassing series of jokes referring to the paternity of a policeman’s son, which is inappropriate for children and unfunny for adults.

Once the film hits a kind of stride, with elements of a mystery and certain revelations regarding some characters, Hugo becomes more interesting. This change comes at exactly the point, I think, at which Scorsese’s true interest in the premise of the movie becomes apparent. I could almost see him rub his hands together and say, “All right, now we get to the good stuff.” The manner in which a fictional version of the life of Georges Méliès is woven into the story, and how it corresponds very closely with reality, is well done and, is, in effect, the heart of the film.

The performances are very good, especially from the two children, who have to have been nearly perfect not to ruin the movie. Kingsley, as well, is excellent, with good support from Helen McCrory and Michael Stuhlbarg; also involved are a number of well-known British actors in very minor parts, such as Richard Griffiths, Frances de la Tour and Emily Mortimer. Scorsese appears briefly as a photographer.

Then there is the strange case of Christopher Lee. I do not know if his character, a bookshop-owner, is in the original story from which the film was adapted, but his scenes come across as inserts, added after the fact. Isabelle is a young bibliophile, reading all the time, and her introduction to motion pictures is important to Hugo’s plot. I wonder if someone worried that this would be seen as suggesting that books were inferior to movies. Personally, I don’t feel that praising one item is denigrating another, but then I wasn’t raised in the twenty-first century. In any case, Lee’s scenes are pointless.

Hugo, then, is, I think, a good movie, in which the more significant second half could have used some prominent foreshadowing in the first. Not without its flaws, it does redeem itself somewhat as the true nature of the story is revealed. The fact that true interest in the film may also take time to build almost ruins it, however.