No invention for Scorsese

Martin Scorsese is seen by many as the greatest living American filmmaker. Not only is he much respected as a filmmaker and storyteller, he is also involved in numerous film preservation projects. It makes sense that Scorsese would be interested in adapting Brian Selznick’s charming children’s book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, a charming simple story that happens to be about preserving the cinematic past and not allowing it to go to ruin or oblivion. It is in this light that the resulting film, the multi-Oscar nominated 3-D family drama Hugo, is generally highly recommended viewing for film fans; after all, a master filmmaker (The Aviator, Shutter Island, The Departed) is making a film about (his love for) cinema itself. What a pity that Scorsese’s film ends up being nothing more than an average family drama about belonging. Anyone who maintains that Hugo is about the art of film itself should admit the film we’re watching contributes very little to the art form other than recreating some familiar images from the cinema of the past. My suspicion is that many people revere Hugo simply because of its content, and not because of innovative filmmaking, of which it demonstrates despairingly little.

The story is rather charming: an orphaned boy, Hugo (Asa Butterfield, who recently signed on to star in the forthcoming Ender’s Game adaptation) lives in the Paris train station circa 1930. He makes sure that all the station’s clocks are running on time and lives from scraps of food that he steals from vendors spread around the station. Once his work is done, Hugo focuses his attention on fixing some sort of invention that his late father (Jude Law) had left him. Desperate for parts he can use to bring the invention to life, he is caught stealing mechanical bits and parts by the local toy shop owner George (Ben Kingsley). George’s granddaughter (an impressive Chloe Grace Moretz) takes a liking to the wide-eyed, blue-eyed Hugo and undertakes to help him in his quest and in a sense protect him from the rather unfriendly George. They uncover a secret past long thought buried that can possibly revitalise not only the grumpy George but many others as well.

Meanwhile, Scorsese creates a wonderfully inhabited train station with some colourful secondary characters, my favourite of which is Sasha Baron Cohen’s station master. The actor displays some brilliant comic timing in his few scenes, and his attempts to clumsily woo Emily Mortimer’s flower seller are sweet and convincing.

Those who want to go into the film completely cold should stop reading now. To you I say: watch Hugo, expect little, and enjoy. The 3-D is rather good but, as usual, not necessary to tell this particular story. Hugo is good family entertainment but is otherwise a minor work for Scorsese at best; considering his oeuvre, this is the director at his most visually conservative, reigned in and just plain average in over fifteen years.

Now, some spoilers (I suppose).

It turns out that toy shop owner George is none other than French formalist, magician and fantasist George Melies, a filmmaker famous for A Trip to the Moon and many other silent shorts that remain visually impressive. I was fortunate enough to attend a screening of several Melies shorts last year at Open Window, and Melies emerged once more as a film pioneer. Where the Lumieres were content to put the camera down and record whatever was happening in front of it, Melies preferred to create the content of the films himself. The filmmaker ended up being one of the first filmmakers to cut trailers for movies, and in his joyous inventiveness even faked news ‘programmes’ to show to astonished audiences.

In making a film about such a creative force, Scorsese had to not only recreate some of Melies’s professional history but also imbue his own current project with an inventiveness and energy similar to what the earlier master exhibited. Scorsese pays great attention to the recreations and the details of the period, and they are little pleasures in their own right: one often hears the story of the audiences panicking at the arrival of a train on a big film screen, but it is quite lovely to see them duck as the train pulls into the station. Scorsese is clearly passionate about the period and its cultural outputs, going to great trouble to recreate some of the images now immortalised in film studies.

But recreation only gets you so far, and Hugo is an assortment of lengthy stretches where nothing significant happens (except in the plot itself) interspersed with fleeting moments where Scorsese’s genius is in full display. The shots of the City of Lights as seen from Hugo’s window are beautifully rendered, while my favourite shot in the entire film has to be when a famous art work is explicitly linked to film as an art of life and creation.

These moments are too few and over too quickly to compensate for the rest of the film, which is rather slow and plain. Poor Hugo isn’t much of a hero, and Butterfield doesn’t have to do much more than run, tear up and stand with his mouth agape. And if one should encounter the argument that Hugo is actually Melies’s story, why is the film named after the young orphan? (Note: it makes sense in the book.) There are many great films that are about the love of film as envisioned by master filmmakers: consider some of the films of Kiarostami and De Palma. And, of course, Bill Condon’s affecting Gods and Monsters, featuring the best work Brendan Fraser ever committed to screen. Hugo is not to take its place alongside these great films. It is an unexceptional film executed as straightforward entertainment and lacks any emotional or intellectual staying power. 

It would be a shame to see Scorsese accept an Oscar for such (by his own standards) pedestrian work.