As I came home from watching Hugo, I had come up with a nice way of getting into the review. But now, in the light of day, I can’t remember the hook. That’s unfortunate as I think it was gonna be a good intro that would’ve made me set up this review well and forced me to write with a better, even tone.
Hugo is about a young orphan living in one of the train stations of Paris, spending the day dodging Jean Girard, and winding the multitude of clocks of the station. He’s the son of a tinkerer who had found a windup doll in the museum which he planned to fix before his death. Hugo takes it upon himself to finish his father’s work by attempting to fix the mechanical doll. The tasks leads him to steal gears and springs from the toy shop in the station the proprietor of which carries the biggest surprise of the movie.
For the early part of the film, I was slightly bored. Hugo’s story was slow in unravelling and slightly uninteresting. It was another story about poor orphan looking for a sign his father loved him. Why am I watching this?
Hugo does finish the mechanical doll. He winds it up and lets it write the message he thought his father had left him, but instead of the trite fatherly pablum, the mechanical doll draws something whimsical, a scene by George Melies signed by Melies. This changes the movie to being about something more magical, movies.
And here’s where I remember what I was gonna write for the intro. In my former life, I had studied film and with it an introduction to then history of film. We got to see Melies, Lloyd, and Buster Keaton. Their films are as important to the history of film as they were integral to this movie especially Melies. His Voyage to the Moon is amazing and that said it made Hugo slightly worth it.
Melies makes this film for me. As he tells his tale of his life, the movie broadens up to being a tribute to a master storyteller. The tale of Hugo is the tale of finding something to fix. Hugo didn’t have to fix the mechanical doll. He had to fix history so that it remembers Melies. He had to fix Melies so that he remembers the magic. Movies are magic.
3 of 5 stars
Notes on the film: I miss the sound of the projector. Ben Kingsley in a good movie? Who would’ve thought?! Sacha Baron Cohen throwing out another one of his insane characters. I thought he should’ve been Inspector Clouseau. I was reminded of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book. For French people, they speak with a British accent.
