Hugo [PG]

Once upon a time, in a crowded train station in Paris, lived a small boy named Hugo. An orphan with a knack for fixing things, Hugo spends his time tending the clocks of the station and pilfering gears from a toymaker in order to fix an abandoned metal man that his father once brought home from a museum. But when the toymaker catches Hugo, an adventure is set into motion as the toymaker’s reaction to Hugo’s notebook with pictures of the metal man makes Hugo wonder if there is some special secret that is trying to resurface. 

STUNNING, ABSOLUTELY STUNNING! Earning six Academy Awards including Best Achievement in Cinematography, Art Direction, Sound Editing, Visual Effects, and Sound Mixing, Hugo is a wonderfully mesmerising film that is filled with wonderful inflections of nostalgia, purpose, belonging, imagination, and the magic of cinema. It’s a wondrous, wondrous cinematic achievement, one that will definitely be going into the collection when it’s released on DVD. 

Once upon a time, in a crowded train station in Paris, there lived a small boy named Hugo. AN orphan with a knack for fixing things, Hugo spends his time tending the clocks in the station and pilfering gears and clockwork mechanisms from a toymaker in order to fix an abandoned metal man that his father once brought home from a museum. But one day the toymaker catches Hugo and a memorable adventure is set into motion, as the toymaker’s reaction to Hugo’s notebook, which contains instructions and pictures of the metal man, causes Hugo to wonder if the toymaker has some special secret that is trying to resurface. With the help of his new friend Isabelle, Hugo embarks upon a remarkable adventure to find truth, purpose, and a place where he belongs. 

Oh, this is such a lovely film! Visually, it’s a work of unearthly genius; the marriage of the visual effects and the sound effects was a winning matrimony, with particularly wonderful usage of the tinker tinkering sound of clockwork. It did more than just fill the silence of the more dramatic or tense moments, it set the pace of the film and it did so with such precision and articulate staccato; such that would cause your heartbeat and pulse to tick along in time with it. I was irrevocably hooked from the very first tick. 

To play against the astounding visual and 3D effects (for this is one of the rare films that is heightened by 3D), Hugo is founded on a very heart warming and breathtaking story about belonging and happiness. Scorsese has brought a wonderful sense of nostalgia to the story, based on the book by Brian Selznick, and, I think has successfully reawakened the magic of cinema. In this bustling and modern age, the appreciation of the art and magic of the movies has been lost, but with Hugo it has been found and brought back to centre stage. Wonderful feelings of reminiscence are felt when watching this film, not dissimilar to the effect that Cinema Paradiso had on its audience, just with more special effects and cinematic achievements. 

I also thought it was particularly wonderful that real history was brought into the mix. We see the first use of the movie camera and then are shown the magic of director Georges Melies’ Le Voyage Dans La Lune (A Trip to the Moon), an outstanding achievement in cinema (you must keep in mind that this dates back to 1902). It’s just wondrous to look back and see what magic has been created through the movies and it’s magnificent to feel that warm wave of nostalgia. At the end of the day, it’s good to know that humans have done something right. 

Featuring dazzling performances from Asa Butterfield, Ben Kingsley, Sacha Baron Cohen, Chloe Grace Moretz, Ray Winstone, Christopher Lee, Helen McCory, Frances de la Tour, Richard Griffiths, Emily Mortimer, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Jude Law, Hugo is a dazzlingly beautiful film that’s filled with adventure, drama, imagination, purpose, comedy, stunning visual effects, amazing achievements in sound, and practically everything else in between. I absolutely adored this movie; I laughed, I swooned, I cried, and it was just enchanting and wonderful to watch a film that relishes in the modern effects but also takes us back in time to marvel at how far the movies have come. It’s just staggering, really. And this is an amazing, AMAZING film!