Martin Scorsese shot his first 3D film in 2011, and he used it on a children’s story about a boy hiding inside the walls of a Paris train station. Hugo is an adventure drama adapted by John Logan from Brian Selznick’s 2007 book The Invention of Hugo Cabret. It runs 126 minutes. The film is, to this paper’s eye, the most personal one Scorsese made that decade.
Trailer, via Paramount Pictures.
A Boy in the Gare Montparnasse
The year is 1931. Twelve-year-old Hugo Cabret lives with his widowed father, a clockmaker at a museum. His father finds a broken automaton, a mechanical man built to draw with a pen, and the two of them try to repair it, writing down their work in a notebook.
Then his father dies in a fire. Hugo moves in with his alcoholic uncle, Claude, who keeps the clocks at Gare Montparnasse. When Claude goes missing, Hugo keeps winding the clocks himself, because Station Inspector Gustave Dasté will send him away if anyone learns the uncle is gone.
Hugo steals parts to fix the automaton. He believes it holds a message from his father. It needs a heart-shaped key.
Georges Takes the Notebook
Hugo gets caught stealing from a toy store. The owner, Georges, takes his notebook and threatens to destroy it. Georges’ goddaughter Isabelle tells Hugo to demand it back. Georges offers a deal instead: Hugo works in the toy store, and may earn the notebook back later.
Isabelle wears a heart-shaped key. Georges gave it to her. She and Hugo wind the automaton, and it draws a scene from A Trip to the Moon, a film Hugo’s father once described to him. The signature reads Georges Méliès. Her godfather.
Ben Kingsley plays Georges. Asa Butterfield plays Hugo. Chloë Grace Moretz plays Isabelle. Sacha Baron Cohen plays the Station Inspector, and the cast runs deep: Ray Winstone, Emily Mortimer, Christopher Lee, Helen McCrory, Michael Stuhlbarg, Frances de la Tour, Richard Griffiths, and Jude Law as Hugo’s father.
The Case for 3D Here
Scorsese said the format paid off with performance. “I found 3D to be really interesting, because the actors were more upfront emotionally,” he said. “Their slightest move, their slightest intention is picked up much more precisely.”
This paper finds that claim convincing, and it is the surprise of the film. The machinery, the clocks, the station crowds — in our view all of it is built to be looked at closely. Our reading is that the film’s real subject is preservation. Méliès, in this paper’s estimation, is a pioneer of cinema, and the film frames his forgotten work as a mystery worth solving.
The awards record backs the craft. Hugo took 11 Academy Award nominations, more than any other film that year, including Best Picture. It won five: Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, and Best Visual Effects. It was nominated for eight BAFTAs and won two, and drew three Golden Globe nominations, including Scorsese’s third win for Best Director.
What the Box Office Says
Hugo was a box-office bomb. It grossed only $185 million against an estimated $150 million budget. That number is the one worth sitting with. A director at the height of his standing made an expensive, effects-heavy film about why old movies matter, and the gross fell short of the budget.
Critics gave the film considerable acclaim, and by this paper’s measure it earns much of it. But Hugo is not, in our view, a misunderstood masterpiece. It is, we would argue, a good film that was sold wrong and priced too high. The 3D is, to us, the least interesting thing about it. The Méliès material is the best.
The cameos — Michael Pitt, Scorsese himself, Selznick — are, in this paper’s view, a nice touch. Our reading of Hugo is that its heart is a boy trying to keep a dead man’s work running. That is the film’s argument, and it holds.
KEY FACTS
– Release: November 23, 2011 (US)
– Runtime: 126 minutes
– Budget: estimated $150 million
– Gross: $185 million
– Academy Awards: 11 nominations, 5 wins
– Metacritic: 83/100
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