"Scorsese in the birthplace of cinema"

Title: Hugo
Year: 2011
Genre: Adventure, Drama, Family
Director: Martin Scorsese
Writer: John Logan (written by), Brian Selznick (book)
Runtime: 126min
Cast: Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz, Ben Kingsley, Sacha Baron Cohen, Ray Winston
Produc.: Paramount Pictures, GK Films, Infinitum Nihil 
Budget: $170 million approx.

In Hugo we are located in the Paris of the 30's, where Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) is an orphan who lives hidden in a train station and whose specialty is to repair appliances. Hugo leads a solitary existence, with an absent guardian, his alcoholic uncle Claud (Ray Winston), a good for nothing, unable to care for him or to fix the clocks in the terminal, work that does his nephew. 

Among his belongings Hugo has an automaton, a machine that mimics the shape and movements of a living being and that constitutes the greates legacy left by his father. He knows that this device has been designed to express something on paper, either a phrase, a drawing or some kind of message. However, his automaton is not complete and Hugo must find certain items to facilitate the functioning of its mechanism. Thus, one day that Hugo is active doing his stuff, he meets Georges Méliès (Ben Kingsley), a toy salesman from the station, who has no sympathy towards him, in addition to calling him a thief. Furious, Méliès takes away another of his most prized possessions: a book, to the child, of crucial importance, and without which he will be lost. To make matters worse, his very presence at the station is not well seen, where in the eyes of the inspector, he is nothing but a fugitive. This means that Hugo has to approach Méliès business to recover what is his, but without being arrested in the act. A little bit later Hugo will meet Isabelle, a girl, goddaughter of Méliès, whom he will ask for help to retrieve his book and who, along with him, will discover a wonderful secret. 

After many years telling us of tough guys (1990 GoodFellas, Casino 1995, Gangs of New York 2002 or The Departed 2006), Martin Scorsese has decided to go into a story that finally children and adults can enjoy the same, and where we do not hear a single insult along the entire film. Scorsese leaves the world of corruption and violence to try and provide his signature to Brian Selznick´s book, granting himself the possibility of doing homage to one of the key moments of the emergence of this entertainment world, that opened its doors to him once. 

Brian Selznick previously addressed this history, showing the circumstances that surrounded Georges Méliès, illusionist, and later, filmmaker. Méliès was a man who in a fair, after meeting the Lumiere brothers and their intriguing movie projector, had been fascinated and wanted then to buy it to them. But the brothers had refused to sell it and in the end Méliès had designed his own version of the device. 

In the book, on the other hand Selznick invented Hugo, a child, skillful with his hands and who would link us to Mr. Méliès. 

Concerning the film, Scorsese shows us who Hugo is and what he seeks, using flashbacks to explain it better. The kid lives entirely by his own and in a reality that is alien to the rest. Now, when Hugo sees how injustice or bad luck accompany him again, it becomes very difficult to feel his suffering from the outside, because at all times he is seen with the exact same expression on his face, which speaks of a not very good job at directing actors. If one put the film, looked closely at Hugo in three or four scenes and then speeded up the tape about forty minutes, would be surprised to find the exact same gestures, ineffective at the moment of conveying what the child feels or thinks. Being then a film which subject is indeed interesting, easy to understand, very well photographed and superbly recreated in terms of historical reconstruction, the perfect finishing touch would have been a more convincing and heart-breaking performance, that we certainly never see. 

On the other hand, it should be emphasized Scorsese´s quality to make a brief review of the history of cinema, whose origin was precisely in France. Drawing on Georges Méliès as a motor trigger, the director gives us a glimpse of the primitive cinema, and where we are pointed out how did all began and how did the special effects appeared, from the first few hundred meters of celluloid. 

I think the worst that could happen at this point would be that the audience was oblivious to these circumstances. Those who know the more basic historical details about the beginnings of this art may be excited and feel the hair on the back of their neks stand up against this segment. Those who, however, do not know nothing about it, will probably believe that this is a very entertaining little story, but invented. To those of this second group I recommend Forgotten Silver (1995) by Peter Jackson. 

My rating: 7/10

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