Hugo (2011) directed by Martin Scorsese
I'll just start off by saying that Hugo makes the best use of 3-D I've ever seen in a film which is pretty remarkable considering it is Martin Scorcese's first big budget special effects feature. What is an old school legend known for his gripping dramas doing making a CGI laden kid's fantasy adventure story? It is easy to forget that even adults were once kids. Undoubtedly young Martin Scorcese daydreamed and fantasized like the rest of us. As a child he was immediately drawn to the magical qualities of film, a wonderful medium for which to tell stories and express dreams and wonder. How fitting is it then that his first children's movie is basically about movies.
Hugo is a young orphan who lives in a Paris train station. He lives behind the walls and goes about maintaining all the clocks in the station incognito, a job left to him by his drunk uncle who left him. His daily routine is fixing the clocks, stealing food and avoiding capture by the station's inspector who loves nothing more than to snatch up orphans. Hugo's real passion however is fixing an old automaton, a robot of sorts, that he and his father were working on before he unexpectedly died. The automaton is all he has left of his father and by fixing it he hopes to reconnect with him somehow. He must steal the spare parts he needs and is caught by a cranky toy shop owner who is visibly upset when he discovers Hugo's plan for fixing an old automaton.
Hugo befriends the old man's goddaughter Isabelle and the two share adventures together. These are fantastic adventures not in the sense of slaying dragons or discovering a pirate's treasure, but in the simpler things that we as adults often take for granted. They explore the train station together, go to a bookstore and sneak off to the movies and these scenes remind us what it's like to be kids again.
The film is broken into two distinct halves, the first being Hugo's story; his chase scenes with the station inspector, uncovering the mystery of the automaton with Isabelle and ultimately trying to find meaning in his life. This leads to the second half of the film where Hugo discovers that the answers to his questions lies with the old toy shop owner who himself struggles to find meaning to his own life. I don't want to give anything away but it inevitably leads to the early history of cinema. These moments are a cinephile's wet dream. Even to casual observers these scenes are enchanting, magical and wonderfully informative.
As I stated earlier this is the best use of 3-D I've ever seen in a film. It's not that things pop out even more, it's how they pop out. For instance in the very beginning of the film we are treated to several long tracking shots that weave through the train station and all the people on the platform and through the walls past all the pipes and gears. As the scene progresses it is like a pop up book unfolding revealing layer after layer of extra depth and dimension. It goes to show that it is not the technology that creates the wonderful effects (though it certainly helps) but the vision behind it to make it all happen.
I really loved the homage that Scorcese pays to these old time classics. There are clips of Buster Keaton and other long forgotten greats. The famous scene where Keaton hangs from a clock tower is recreated later when Hugo attempts to flee the inspector. One of the very first films ever was of a train pulling into a station titled "Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat" (1897). People who were watching that for the first time instinctively tried to jump out of the way. Imagine how those early patrons would have reacted to Scorcese's 3-D version. It is this original sense of imagination and wonder that Scorcese puts into this film.
Grade: A
I'll just start off by saying that Hugo makes the best use of 3-D I've ever seen in a film which is pretty remarkable considering it is Martin Scorcese's first big budget special effects feature. What is an old school legend known for his gripping dramas doing making a CGI laden kid's fantasy adventure story? It is easy to forget that even adults were once kids. Undoubtedly young Martin Scorcese daydreamed and fantasized like the rest of us. As a child he was immediately drawn to the magical qualities of film, a wonderful medium for which to tell stories and express dreams and wonder. How fitting is it then that his first children's movie is basically about movies.
Hugo is a young orphan who lives in a Paris train station. He lives behind the walls and goes about maintaining all the clocks in the station incognito, a job left to him by his drunk uncle who left him. His daily routine is fixing the clocks, stealing food and avoiding capture by the station's inspector who loves nothing more than to snatch up orphans. Hugo's real passion however is fixing an old automaton, a robot of sorts, that he and his father were working on before he unexpectedly died. The automaton is all he has left of his father and by fixing it he hopes to reconnect with him somehow. He must steal the spare parts he needs and is caught by a cranky toy shop owner who is visibly upset when he discovers Hugo's plan for fixing an old automaton.
Hugo befriends the old man's goddaughter Isabelle and the two share adventures together. These are fantastic adventures not in the sense of slaying dragons or discovering a pirate's treasure, but in the simpler things that we as adults often take for granted. They explore the train station together, go to a bookstore and sneak off to the movies and these scenes remind us what it's like to be kids again.
The film is broken into two distinct halves, the first being Hugo's story; his chase scenes with the station inspector, uncovering the mystery of the automaton with Isabelle and ultimately trying to find meaning in his life. This leads to the second half of the film where Hugo discovers that the answers to his questions lies with the old toy shop owner who himself struggles to find meaning to his own life. I don't want to give anything away but it inevitably leads to the early history of cinema. These moments are a cinephile's wet dream. Even to casual observers these scenes are enchanting, magical and wonderfully informative.
As I stated earlier this is the best use of 3-D I've ever seen in a film. It's not that things pop out even more, it's how they pop out. For instance in the very beginning of the film we are treated to several long tracking shots that weave through the train station and all the people on the platform and through the walls past all the pipes and gears. As the scene progresses it is like a pop up book unfolding revealing layer after layer of extra depth and dimension. It goes to show that it is not the technology that creates the wonderful effects (though it certainly helps) but the vision behind it to make it all happen.
I really loved the homage that Scorcese pays to these old time classics. There are clips of Buster Keaton and other long forgotten greats. The famous scene where Keaton hangs from a clock tower is recreated later when Hugo attempts to flee the inspector. One of the very first films ever was of a train pulling into a station titled "Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat" (1897). People who were watching that for the first time instinctively tried to jump out of the way. Imagine how those early patrons would have reacted to Scorcese's 3-D version. It is this original sense of imagination and wonder that Scorcese puts into this film.
Grade: A
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