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| For the love of film |
If you love any of the following: movies, movies with heart, how movies are made, how movies came to be, interesting characters, Paris, Dickens, young love, redemption, Rube Goldberg-like machinations, intelligent portrayals of children, Martin Scorsese – you will love this movie.
The Long Version:
This movie is important to me if for nothing else than it pushed me to create this blog. That sounds really pretentious and maybe more than a little cliche. But the simple fact is this: I loved it so much, I wanted to say something about it publicly.
Like the creation of this blog, my viewing of Hugo was late. It popped up on Netflix (the crappy Canadian version no less) and I had every intention of watching it immediately. I already knew the broadstrokes of the film. I was already intrigued to see a fairytale children's film from Martin Scorsese, a man not known for his soft and cuddly subject matter. I had read the raving reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, not least of which Roger Ebert's – a man whose opinions I have a love/hate relationship with.
With all of this predestined love for Hugo, to say that seeing this film 14 months after its theatrical release was a bit of an oversight from someone who purports to be a big fan of film might be underselling it. I screwed up. I should have put this much higher on my to-do list in the Fall of '11. But I didn't. Why? Well, there was this:
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| My contribution to the Star Wars universe |
So, why all the need to build this justification in your mind, dear reader, as to why I did not see Hugo in theatres? Because it's a decision I would change in a moment if I could. Heck, I would have taken the kid with me to some matinee with zero attendance just to see this movie as it was meant to be seen. On a big screen. In full digital surround sound. With a colossal bag of popcorn (this movie is comfort food, so it makes sense to have plenty of it at hand). And, yes, most unexpected of all:
In 3D.
To be clear, I do not own a 3D television. I have not seen Hugo in 3D. And yet, simply from watching it in HD – which is a delight nonetheless – I can clearly see that this movie is one of the strongest arguments in favour of the technique to date. More so than Avatar. Yes, I'm sorry Mr. Cameron, but while your 3D extravaganza was without question the first true proof-of-concept, Hugo injects a massive dose of something in the effect that your film was either lacking a bit or felt forced (I can't decide): Wonder.
This is a film designed not for children, but for the child in all of us. This is not only true of the visuals, but of the characters and the story itself. As many others have noted, the two leads of the film, our eponymous hero Hugo (Asa Butterfield, then aged 14) and his partner in crime and love-interest Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz, then also 14), were unlike nearly all young characters in films of the past 20-odd years. In other words they weren't brats, crass, dumb, shrill, or simply irritating. Which is good because the film hinges on their likeability. If we don't care about what happens to them, especially Hugo, then Mr. Scorsese has a beautiful-looking film about nothing. I try to keep from gushing about an actor's performance too often, but in the case of Asa Butterfield I simply can't help it. For starters, this boy's eyes are utterly captivating. The way he looks at this fantastical world around him is what sells 90% of the Wonder-with-a-Capital-W the film exudes. Naturally, it doesn't hurt that his character's situation, much like Oliver Twist's, is of a young boy left alone to fend for himself in a very harsh, unsympathetic world.
Again, the casting of this film is feat in itself. Even rather small roles like Hugo's dearly departed father being played by Jude Law shows a commitment to getting these characters right. Jude's character is on screen for what felt like 2 minutes. But in that short time my heart broke for young Hugo at having lost the last (or next-to-last) truly good thing in his life. It doesn't hurt that I also lost a parent at a similar age, so I was left even more exposed to Scorsese's tugging of my heartstrings. More of this happens later when Ben Kingsley, whom last I saw in the sadly mediocre Prince of Persia, reminded me why he is who he is. Once his character is fully exposed to these two children, for reasons I will leave unexplained for those who haven't seen the film, he gives a wondrous, melancholic and ultimately heart-wrenching account of his life's work. It is scenes like these where we see masters at work. In essence, they are delivering exposition and facts – in this case actual historical facts that you could simply read on Wikipedia. But the way they are presented to us is what gives this scene such emotional resonance. Kingsley's character isn't just recounting history. He's opening a very old wound that he has tried for years to bury and pretend does not exist. We learn more about his character in a single scene than we do throughout the whole movie. While it is one of the longer scenes in the movie (maybe the longest) it is still only a few minutes long. Yet in that time we are helplessly swept along through a wave of emotions to arrive at a conclusion that leaves us feeling what he feels, nearly as intensely as he feels it. That's somethin. For a point of reference I will direct you to this similar kind of scene: grab a hanky.
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| Apologies if you ugly cried. |
For anyone who knows a bit of history about him, you'll know this kid was absolutely rabid about film from a very early age. So much of his career up to this point has been spent intermingling that love with his love (possibly love/hate) for New York City. For many years, the love of that city dominated his films, and thus that underlying love of films, at least as far as the viewer was concerned. Now, I don't claim to be an expert on the director. In fact, I've only become more exposed to his movies in the last decade or so. However, even as a relative newcomer I'm willing to bet that this may be his most personal film to date. It's a term I'm reluctant to use because it often gets thrown around a lot, I suspect by directors who become tired of coming up with inventive ways to promote their films, which they must do endlessly. But look at the facts: a young boy, cut off from the larger world but always gazing at it (Scorsese spent much of his youth inside due to asthma), wishing to be out there, a lover of cinema (Scorsese consumed films to pass the time), a tinkering with mechanics and how things work (Scorsese is exploring the very new art of 3D cinema)... there are a lot of parallels between Hugo and Scorsese himself. So while many of his films are examinations and/or love letters to the city he grew up in, this film is a love letter to his earliest childhood love: film.
The strongest recommendation I can give you is that three-quarters into this movie I realized as I was watching it that I didn't want it to end. I wanted to stay with these characters for days or weeks. I wished there would be a sequel, simply so I could see more of them. I went into this film expecting that I would enjoy it and to be impressed by the caliber of the performances and the visuals.
I came away lost in sheer wonder.
My Name is Rick Ames
and I Approve of This Movie
