In “Hugo,” director Martin Scorsese tells a story that expresses his deep love for the movies. He also transports audiences into a world in which they can experience everything he loves about the movies. You can almost feel Scorsese taking you by the hand and saying, “Come dream with me.”
Scorsese is, inarguably, one of the greatest living directors, and he’s made some of the best movies to grace the silver screen. He’s also a passionate advocate for film preservation. Given Scorsese’s zeal for movies, it’s no wonder he made a movie of “The Invention of Hugo Cabaret,” a children’s book by Brian Selznick. One of its characters is Georges Méliès, a real life French filmmaker celebrated for his early narrative and technical innovations. Méliès made over 530 silent movies between 1896 and 1914, and was the first to employ multiple exposures, time-lapse photography and dissolves. Although crude by today’s standards, his special effects were revolutionary in their day. You’ve probably seen the clip of a rocket landing in the eye of the man on the moon in his famous “A Trip to the Moon.” Tragically, large movie studios forced Méliès into bankruptcy, and many of his films were melted down to make boot heels. As a result, only about 80 of his movies survived.
Driven out of business, Méliès became a toy salesman at the Montparnasse Railway Station in Paris. Before his death at age 76, however, a group of filmmakers bought him a home and gave him the Legion of Honor in recognition of his work in movies. The book and movie take these events in the life of Méliès and blend them with the fictional tale of a 12-year-old orphan named Hugo, who secretly lives within the walls of the train station and maintains its clocks. When Hugo isn’t winding clocks or stealing pastries, he works to restore a broken automaton, a mechanical man Hugo’s father had found and had hoped to repair. When Hugo tries to steal a part he needs from the toyshop Méliès owns, the old man catches him and confiscates his blueprints for the automaton. The mechanical man is missing one part - a heart-shaped key. Convinced the automaton contains a message from his father, Hugo goes to great lengths to retrieve the blueprints. Through his efforts, he meets and gains the assistance of Isabelle, the goddaughter of Méliès. Deepening the mystery, Hugo introduces Isabelle to the movies, which her godfather had never allowed her see, and she helps him find a book about Méliès, whose films inspired Hugo’s father, and who’s the real key to the automaton.
As brought to cinematic life by Scorsese, “Hugo” is a big budget picture. The scope of the train station and the attention to historical detail is stunning. Scorsese filmed the movie in 3D, but doesn’t use the third dimension as a cheap gimmick to sell tickets. Instead, the 3D draws viewers into the station’s intricate clockwork and immerses them in the protagonist’s world. The opening shot, in which the camera descends on Paris in the winter, swoops into the train station, races between passengers, and finds Hugo peering out through a clock face, is breathtaking. Hugo spends a lot of time looking at life from the inside out. As a result, he sees a number of small dramas play out, including the efforts of an old man to court an elderly woman. In this “silent” vignette, the old-timer must figure out a way to distract the lady’s hostile pup, which won’t allow him to approach her. It’s a brilliant way for Scorsese to pay homage to a lost art. More than anything, “Hugo” is an old master’s love letter to the movies.
In a wonderfully realized scene in which the author of the book recalls visiting the set of a Méliès movie as a boy, Méliès approaches the child with wide-eyed enthusiasm and says, “Have you been wondering where your dreams come from? Take a look around you!” “Hugo” is not a perfect movie - it drags in the middle and goes on too long - but it is remarkably well-made and is one of the purest emotional experiences the movies have offered in ages. Please, see it in a theater. Rated PG for mild thematic material, some peril and smoking. Four stars out of four. Email David Laprad at dlaprad@hamiltoncountyherald.com.