Hugo (2011)
Hugo (USA) Directed by Martin Scorcese Written by John Logan Starring Asa Butterfield; Ben Kingsley; Chloe Moretz; Sasha Baron Cohen; Emily Mortimer; Ray Winstone; Christopher Lee; Michael Stuhlbarg; Richard Griffiths
For the past twenty-plus years, Director Martin Scorcese’s career could be described as an unending search to make big, Hollywood films of any and all sorts. With Hugo he manages to touch yet another base, rendering a 3D kids offering that seems to borrow liberally from the spirit of Spielberg and the literal past work of Jean Pierre Jeunet, a director who might have actually made the film this one aspires to be.
Screenwriter John Logan (The Aviator; Gladiator; Coriolanus) adapted Brian Selznick’s popular 2007 children’s novel The Invention of Hugo Cabaret, but the end result is neither as whimsical, quirky, nor funny as it endeavors to be. Starring Asa Butterfield as the Dickens-like Hugo Cabret, an orphan living in a Paris train station clock-tower in the 1930s, the story involves the boy’s connection with a retired film director/toy store owner Georges Melies (Ben Kingsley), and his bookish charge Isabelle (Chloe Moretz), who is also an orphan.
While we know why the film is set is France and yet has characters speaking English, big budget/American box office considerations get no quarter here, and do not mitigate discussion involving the films’ overall merit. The fact is films of this kind, set in a non-English speaking country, but having characters inexplicably speaking the language (often, as here, with a British accent) always have issues with a lack of authenticity.
At 128 minutes, Hugo also has pacing issues aplenty, and is probably twenty minutes too long. Stretching to create mystery where there is little, extended run time is devoted to multiple long scenes where young Hugo mourns his dead father (Jude Law) with passages of expository dialogue. Though Scorcese effectively opens with one of his classic tracking shots, the majority of the many chase scenes seem overextended. There are even issues with some of the 3D effects - i.e. a train wreck where we never see the train jump the tracks; shots going from extreme 3D close-ups to wide shots that seem off kilter.
While the supporting cast is made of up wonderful actors, they are, by and large, underused, particularly in the case of Emily Mortimer, who is barely allowed to speak. While long interludes are devoted to Sasha Baron Cohen’s mugging, other potential story-lines (unlike, for instance, Jeunet’s Amelie) are left entirely unmined, missing out on multiple chances for genuine whimsy and romance. Where shorter, concise passages of the world within the train station might have created a richer, more verdant playing field, Scorcese seems intent on finding ways to use the 3D at his disposal, and unfortunately his employment of such often seems stretched, and winds up coming at the expense of story and further character development.
There is no doubt that there is an essence of classic children’s films being referenced (and only referenced) here, and Scorcese’s vast film knowledge (as well as long time collaborator Dante Ferretti’s skill) contributes to a well designed physical setting, and there is pleasure to be had in journeying around the station and onto the Paris streets. Skilled cinematographer, Robert Richardson, moves the camera with expected ease, and while the technology gives the viewer a fuller, more detailed look at the nooks and crannies of Hugo’s odd world, in only a few places (some interesting close-ups; the cinematic world of Melies) does it pay significant dividends.
Clearly there is a personal statement being made with Scorcese as real life classic film champion and preservationist, and this element of the story seems particularly overwrought, self-serious, and on the nose, with the message pounded home in a misguided, logy third act. Though the fantasy sequences with Melies and his glass studio are exceptionally evoked, this preachy theme eventually takes over the film, further distancing the supporting characters (until a final cribbed from Wes Anderson), and most tragically, minimizing Hugo (the one person we truly care about), his budding relationship with Isabelle, and his search for connection with his father. While in theory the automaton is a nice device linking the old director with Hugo and his Dad it too reads as something flown in from A.I., and never lives up to its magical promise.
While Moretz at times seems vaguely uncomfortable in her role, Asa Butterfield is excellent as the titular Hugo, and his presence helps makes Hugo more watch-able than it might otherwise have been. Ultimately, while the film has its charms, some elusive key ingredient seems buried in a relative morass of form; strain to employ this hot, new technology; and didactic personal statement from the professorial director. While the film contains all the prerequisite trappings and clearly wants us to be moved, wowed, and enchanted, it somehow fails to actually elicit those reactions.