Not only brilliantly shot – thanks to the master direction of Martin Scorcese – but it takes place in Paris, so what could be more perfect? This is Scorcese’s first attempt at a childrens film, but the storyline is also a tribute to early cinema (The Artist for kids?). Adapted from the book “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” by Brian Selznick, yes, THAT Selznick, relative to David O. Selznick (Gone With the Wind) it’s the story of a young orphan Hugo (Asa Butterfield) forced to live with his evil
drunken Uncle (Ray Winstone) after his father (Jude Law) dies. The Uncle tells the child he’ll apprentice under him and he’ll learn the understanding of one thing: “Time is everything” as he’s the gatekeeper for the clocks of the train station.
But Hugo is more fascinated with the repair of an old automaton that his father found, favored and was in the process of restoring before his demise. (an automaton is a sort of mechanical robot. Who knew. Creepy looking thing.)
Enter young Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz) who sympathetically befriends Hugo as she’s a little girl who is the godchild of a toy store owner who employs ole George (Ben Kingsley) in a sympathetic role as an old man who harbors many secrets. This is about the point that the film touches sentimentally on the old way of cinema through Kinetoscopes – objects that allowed you to watch films in small peepshot sort of ways.
And the sentimentality is only exaggerated by the two British children – Hugo and Isabelle – with their Oliver Twist appeal as only big-eyed wondrous British children can perform in all their seemingly deprived culture (or at least in the way Americans
perceive them in movies. Harry Potter, Finding Neverland, etc)
But as the movie reveals all that is important to Kingley’s selfish, miserable character and all that was lost in some fire involving a man in the moon drawing, etc, the film never touch upon the most fragile of situations….that our young Hugo has lost his father and wants to understand why. He’s homeless for godsake! Who cares about the automaton! But moreso if the film is rated a gentle PG (lovely for that) how are age-appropriate children supposed to come to terms with father loss? Maybe that’s the “Goodfellas” in Scorcese. Who knows.
That said, the directing is nothing short of the most miraculous and magnificent of the year. Three tiaras