Following an extended shot that weaves through the Parisian train station in which much of the film is set, Martin Scorsese’s Hugo introduces its titular character (Asa Butterfield), who, from behind the frontal façade of an enormous clock tower, gazes down in wonder at the chaotic action below. The young boy is surrounded by all the winding and ticking gears that, when interlocking in perfect unison, allow the clock to seamlessly function, performing the seemingly simple task of displaying the exact time for an audience unaware of, and likely disinterested in, these innerworkings. For them, it is a mystery—a magic trick that, much like cinema, requires an abundance of separate parts working in tandem, yet it’s only the end result of what they see that ultimately matters.
Hugo is filled with other such mechanical trinkets as that giant clock, whether the wind-up mouse that Georges (Ben Kingsley) keeps at his store or the broken human-shaped automaton that Hugo inherits from his soon-to-be-deceased father (Jude Law), and which he spends the first half of the film desperately trying to fix. The notion of fixing broken things, or reviving them, is a theme that courses throughout the film, which finds beauty and transcendence in the acts of restoration and preservation.
For much of its first hour, Scorsese’s family-friendly film plays like a rather standard, albeit expertly made, Dickensian tale, with the central orphan struggling to cope with his father’s death and the feelings of confusion, hopelessness and dislocation that come with it. During this stretch, Scorsese regrettably indulges in some uncharacteristically twee tactics as a means of adding some levity. One subplot involving an artist (Richard Griffiths), whose affections for a lonely shopkeeper (Frances de la Tour) are repeatedly thwarted by her pesky little dog, quickly grows all-too-precious. Meanwhile, another storyline, in which the dastardly station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) works up the courage to flirt with the owner of a flower shop, Lisette (Emily Mortimer), also veers in the type of sickly sentimentality that Scorsese’s filmmaking is simply not suited for, so it’s no surprise these elements are among the least compelling or emotionally resonant in the film.
Cohen’s station inspector is also something of a perpetual foil to Hugo, as he’s almost obsessively determined to rid the station of orphaned children, hobbling around, frustrated by the metal leg-brace he earned in World War I perpetually seizing up on him. He’s undoubtedly a broadly conceived villain, but very much in tune with the bombastic tone of the film. Also fitting is the burgeoning friendship between Hugo and Georges’ granddaughter, Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz), which blooms as the duo search for ways to get the automaton to work, taking breaks for hijinks such as breaking into a movie theater to catch the classic Harold Lloyd feature, Safety Last!.
Once the secret to unlocking the automaton is discovered, Hugo transforms from an enjoyable yet somewhat trifling kid’s film into an extended homage to and celebration of both early cinema and the selfless, beautiful act of preservation. This little automaton that Hugo was so obsessed with is ultimately revealed to be a Trojan Horse of sorts, a MacGuffin that promised to reveal something to Hugo about his father, but which ultimately reconfigures the entire film. The transition helps the film transcend its rather hackneyed orphan origin story to instead become a story about the challenges and joys of artistic rejuvenation and the powerful effects that can have not only on artists who’ve long been stifled and forgotten but on those who put forth the efforts to breathe new life into artworks that have long been dead and buried.
The automaton’s revelation that Isabelle’s grandfather is indeed the Georges Méliès opens Hugo up into something grander and far more ambitious than we’ve been led to believe by the entire opening act. And as Hugo and Isabelle’s dedicated exploration of Papa Georges’ lost films brings them across the path of a genuine Méliès scholar (Michael Stuhlbarg), who, like most people, believed the director to be dead, the film’s metaphorical correlation with the broken, long-abandoned automaton and early cinema as a whole completely crystallizes.
Hugo is not exactly subtle in drawing these parallels, but it does so with such tenderness and passion that its occasional heavy-handedness is easy to forgive. It’s all the more impressive, and amusing, that Scorsese essentially smuggled in a message about his love of film history and preservation and did so using those winding, ticking gears of cinema—in this case, a clever structural conceit that initially hides said message inside a mysterious object. Early in the film, Hugo’s dad points at the open chest of the automaton, saying “The secret was always in the clockwork.” It’s clearly a sign of Scorsese playfully tipping his hand in revealing where the film’s real message lies, but it’s also a loving reminder that the gears used to both make and preserve art are fickle and in constant need of care and attention. And Hugo displays the magic that can be unleashed in doing so.
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