Hugo Cabret is the son of a Paris watchmaker in the 1920's whose mother dies when he is a baby and whose father dies when Hugo is 10 or so. Hugo is taken in by his uncle, a civil servant whose job it is to keep the clocks in one of Paris's mighty train stations running. Shortly after taking Hugo in and teaching him the ropes the uncle disappears. Hugo stays however believing that as long as he keeps the clocks working no one will notice that his uncle has gone AWOL. Hugo lives in the long forgotten clock keepers apartment at the station and emerges from it's walls only to steal food and to scrounge parts for his big project: the restoration of an automaton his father had found in a museum storeroom shortly before he died.
One day the owner of the station's toy shop catches Hugo attempting to lift a windup mouse and demands Hugo empty his pockets. In one of his pockets he carries the notebook his father had been keeping which contains detailed schematics of the automaton. Upon seeing this the store owner is stricken and demands to know where Hugo got it. Hugo refuses to tell him and as a result the old man confiscates the notebook and vows to destroy it.
Hugo follows the shop owner home pleading for his notebook back but the old man is resolute and eventually closes the door in his face. Hugo spots a girl on the upper floor of the old man's home and gets her attention. She comes out to talk to him and promises to make sure the old man (who is her guardian since she too is an orphan) doesn't destroy it. Over the course of the film a friendship will develop between the two kids that has lasting and profound effects on those around them.
It turns out that the old man is actually the film pioneer Georges Melies, long thought dead but actually clinging on to a woefully unsatisfying existence as the proprietor of the toy shop. He's constantly miserable because he's living an inauthentic life, forced by historical events to give up movie making and take up permanent residence behind the toy store counter.
As I said earlier the film manages to avoid the pothole of nostalgia and it does so by being about something other than the breathtaking visuals of a Paris that never really was. That "other" thing is purpose. The story is set in post World War I Europe where the search for "the meaning of it all" was a daily past time that mostly yielded naught but disillusionment. Hugo realizes that meaning is perhaps not all its cracked up to be and that purpose is the real driver of the human spirit. Where meaning can be twisted to fit even the most odious ideology, purpose, that feeling we have that we know what we should be doing, rarely ever changes. It's when people are removed from their purpose or prevented from ever taking it up in the first place that societies begin to develop cracks. This theme of purpose also feeds directly into the reading of Hugo as an autobiographical film for Martin Scorsese. He realized early on what his purpose was and pursued it with gusto. As a result he's given us some of the most stirring, brutal and yet truthful films of the past half century. When he shows us a morose and bitter Georges Melies he's also speculating on what he might have become had he made the "safe" decision and pursued a more traditional career path. Yes, art is risky, but where is the safety in bitterness? Where is the safety in feeling you've wasted your life?
The cast all do a stellar job in support of Scorsese's vision here starting with Ben Kingsley as the aged, embittered film maker who, through the intervention of a young boy, finds renewed purpose in his end days. Asa Butterfield as Hugo demonstrates a range not found in many young actors and Chloe Grace Moretz plays his young, adventure craving friend to continental perfection. Sacha Baron Cohen is reigned in by his role as the Station Inspector and manages to bring depth to what could have been a fairly cardboard character. The rest of the cast, including Jude Law and Christopher Lee, bring a joi de vivre to their performances that demonstrate how thoroughly everyone involved bought into the film.
The film is beautifully rendered using state of the art techniques. While this may seem a strange thing to say about a Martin Scorsese movie it's actually not so odd at all when you consider that Melies is widely considered to be the father of special effects and as an ode to him... well, you get it. Scorsese himself demonstrates a deft hand with the actors in a movie which required just that.
Hugo isn't a movie for young children. To really appreciate it you have to understand something about people and how easy it is to get sidetracked or totally lost in life. No, Hugo is a film for adults, wherein Scorsese fires a warning shot across the bow of anyone out there who might have a strong sense of purpose but who is considering tossing it aside in the name of safety and security.
"Maybe that's why a broken machine always makes me a little sad, because it isn't able to do what it was meant to do... Maybe it's the same with people. If you lose your purpose... it's like you're broken." - Hugo
Amen.
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