Hugo (2011)

Martin Scorsese is one of those directors whose films are instantly recognizable as that specific director's work, with his films being especially well-known for their dark and gritty nature. When you watch Hugo, you may not realize it is a Scorsese picture. He has never done anything even remotely like this. One of the signs of a truly great director is when one is able to make good movies out of any material, regardless of genre or target audience. Hugo is an excellent family adventure film, and as such, is one of Scorsese's finest and most personal achievements. The story takes place inside a train station, where a little boy named Hugo has been living behind the walls and keeping the clocks in working order ever since his father died. He is also trying to fix a machine that he believes will give him a message from his deceased parent, and in the mean-time befriends an intelligent young girl and her guardian, George Melies.

If mentioning the name of George Melies made you perk up your ears in interest, this is without question the movie for you. If you have no idea who Melies is, this will still be a great experience. Hugo is a movie made by a man who clearly loves movies. Scorsese was the one who helped start the Library of Congress Film Preservation project and he is always looking for "lost" films to restore, sometimes out of pocket. With this film, he focuses in on the greatest film-maker from the beginning of the movies. When films were first being made as mere novelty attractions, the biggest successes in the business were Thomas Edison, the Lumiere brothers, and George Melies. Melies was the first one, however, to include a plot in his films and, having previously been a magician, often included elaborate special effects. His biggest hit, A Trip to the Moon, was also what bankrupted him. Ben Kingsley plays the man in this film and becomes the heart of the story. There are two montage sequences here, one showing quick clips of the films of Buster Keaton, Charles Chaplin, Louise Brooks, and D. W. Griffith, and the other showing snippets of Melies' work. These moments will make any cinephile fall in love with this movie. Scorsese is showing a world that chooses to ignore this chapter in their history how wonderful it made people feel at the time, and how wonderful it is to keep these films in memory.

The great thing about Hugo is that it is not merely a cinematic history lesson, as the portion of the film I was just describing doesn't even come around until the last quarter. Prior to all that, this is a movie about family. An orphan who enjoys fixing machines decides he is going to fix an old man who needs a new start. It is a fantasy that does not require the absurd nonsense that accompanies something like Twilight. The fantasy genre only needs a circumstance outside of the ordinary. The events in Hugo certainly would be odd if they had occurred in real life, but there is never a moment where we feel that this couldn't have happened. The train station was convincingly built with computers in a case where this adds a welcome element of whimsy. This is technically a normal train station, but with a mystical quality to it; the perfect place to have an adventure. The inhabitants of the station all could have easily emerged from a Jacques Tati film with their quietly comedic moments and brief, but happy stories. Even the "villain," the Station Inspector, played with surprising enjoyability by Sacha Baron Cohen, never does anything truly evil, earning himself a tidy wrap-up as well. This is not a movie where secondary characters are tossed aside in favor of more interesting things, because Scorsese sees and shows us the interesting qualities in everything and everybody, from a flower girl to a mysterious key.

This is the perfect family movie. It contains nothing objectionable or alarming and it encourages kids towards ideas of creative thinking rather than filling their minds with random stupidity. It will entertain them and it will teach them something, without ever becoming uninteresting or dry. And, as the perfect test for the qualities of a family film, adults will enjoy it too, especially those who already have fondness for the material Hugo pays homage. This is a movie that reminded me why I love movies, getting me excited about revisiting the past in a way nothing on the screen ever has. I hope that it will also remind others that the past is not something to ignore or mock; we owe all of our entertainment to that starting point and we must treat it with the respect it deserves. Hugo is the most creative and entertaining family movie in years. For adults and children equally, it is more alive and exciting than any other film this year.

10/10