The opening shots of “Hugo” introduce our hero, a young orphan who secretly lives and works in a Parisian rail station. From behind the huge rail station clock, his young eyes watch the hustle and bustle of the station’s inhabitants. It brings to mind the opening of “Taxi Driver,” another film by Martin Scorsese, which opens with the eyes of cabbie-turned-assassin Travis Bickle. But that’s where the similarities between the two films end.
By Noah Gittell
The opening shots of “Hugo” introduce our hero, a young orphan who secretly lives and works in a Parisian rail station. From behind the huge rail station clock, his young eyes watch the hustle and bustle of the station’s inhabitants. It brings to mind the opening of “Taxi Driver,” another film by Martin Scorsese, which opens with the eyes of cabbie-turned-assassin Travis Bickle. But that’s where the similarities between the two films end.
Hugo is an orphan who lives in the station’s rafters, keeping the clocks running on time so that no one notices that his caretaker uncle has gone, in which case he would be shipped off to the orphanage. The screenwriters lay on the Dickensian details pretty thick – there is a mean old man with a secret, a young girl looking for adventure, and a formidable manager with a hound that he uses to track down and capture orphans. But unlike Dickens, there is no realism beneath their eccentricities, and so there are no real stakes. The characters in the station each have their moment (Sacha Baron Cohen owns the film’s most charming scene as the comically bitter station manager wooing a flower girl), but it never serves the greater good of the story. As a result, the first half of the film feels disjointed and clunky, each scene a tangent to a central storyline that we do not yet understand.
This disconnect is understandable, as Scorsese is working at once in several genres that are new to him. Most of all, his films are rarely plot-driven. His most memorable works are atmospheric or idea-driven and can be summed up in a short sentence. Cab driver goes crazy (“Taxi Driver”). The Mafia rises and falls (“Goodfellas”). Lots of people get shot in the head (“The Departed”). So he predictably has trouble with the first hour, in which the mystery develops. Plus, not too many child actors can carry an hour of film, and the two who play Hugo and his accomplice Isabelle are sadly not up to the challenge.
Since “Hugo” is structured as a mystery, it would rob the viewer of some third-act surprises to give away too much of the plot. Hugo gets caught stealing from the mean old man (Sir Ben Kingsley), who runs a toyshop in the station. We learn he is stealing parts to finish a toy he and his father were fixing together – before his father was killed in a fire. What the toy can do and the old man’s connection to it are what constitute the mystery.
But the story of the old man is the film’s real — and true — subject. That is to say, “Hugo” is not really about Hugo at all.
Once the mystery is revealed, we breathe a sigh of relief because we realize that we are now on much firmer ground with Scorsese than we realized. The old man’s true identity is revealed, and it has something to do with the birth of cinema itself. The adventure that Hugo and Isabella were seeking is, in fact, in the movies.
Film buffs know that Scorsese has an encyclopedic knowledge of film, especially the early days of cinema. Georges Méliès and the Lumière brothers are like family to him. Some may also know how he spent his youth. Banished to the indoors by severe asthma, a young Scorsese envied the kids playing stickball in the streets of Brooklyn and found solace in the dark, cool picture houses of the ‘40s and ‘50s.
Incorporating these early filmmakers and his own childhood into the story, Scorsese has made his most explicitly personal film yet. It is almost if, after decades of proving himself to the neighborhood boys with blood and guts, he has come back to himself and his roots. With a legendary career already behind him, I look forward to what this old master will do next.
