Psycho's Movie Reviews #432: HUGO (2011)

Hugo is a 2011 American adventure drama film directed and produced by Martin Scorsese, and adapted for the screen by John Logan. Based on Brian Selznick's 2007 book The Invention of Hugo Cabret, it tells the story of a boy who lives alone in the Gare Montparnasse railway station in Paris in the 1930s, only to become embroiled in a mystery surrounding his late father's automaton and the pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès.

Hugo is Scorsese's first film shot in 3D, about which the filmmaker remarked, "I found 3D to be really interesting, because the actors were more upfront emotionally. Their slightest move, their slightest intention is picked up much more precisely." The film was released in the United States on November 23, 2011.

Hugo received 11 Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture), more than any other film that year, winning five: Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, and Best Visual Effects. It was also nominated for eight BAFTAs, including a Best Director nomination (for Scorsese) and winning two, and was nominated for three Golden Globe awards, earning Scorsese his third Golden Globe Award for Best Director. Despite receiving acclaim from critics, the film was considered a box office failure, grossing just $185 million against its estimated $150 million budget.

Plot

In 1931 Paris, 14-year-old Hugo Cabret lives with his widowed father, a clockmaker who works at a museum. Hugo's father finds a broken automaton – a mechanical man created to write with a pen. He and Hugo try to repair it, documenting their work in a notebook. When his father dies in a fire, Hugo goes to live with his father's alcoholic brother, Uncle Claude, who maintains the clocks at Gare Montparnasse railway station. When Claude goes missing, Hugo continues maintaining the clocks, fearing that Station Inspector Gustave Dasté will send him away if Claude's absence is discovered. Hugo attempts to repair the automaton with stolen parts, believing it contains a message from his father, but the machine requires a heart-shaped key.

Hugo is caught stealing parts from a toy store, and the owner, Georges, takes his notebook, threatening to destroy it. Georges' goddaughter Isabelle suggests that Hugo confront Georges and demand it back. Georges proposes that Hugo work at his toy store as recompense, and after some time he might return the notebook. Hugo accepts and commences work, in addition to his job maintaining the clocks. Isabelle and Hugo become fast friends, and Hugo is astonished to see she wears a heart-shaped key, given to her by Georges. Hugo shows her the automaton, which they activate with the key. It draws a scene from the 1902 film A Trip to the Moon, once described to Hugo by his father. Isabelle identifies the drawing's signature as that of "Georges Méliès" – her godfather. She sneaks Hugo into her home, where they find a hidden cache of drawings, but they are discovered by Georges.

Several days later, at the Film Academy Library, Hugo and Isabelle find a book about the history of cinema that praises Méliès' contributions. They meet the book's author, René Tabard, a film expert who is surprised to hear Méliès is alive, as he disappeared after World War I along with the copies of his films. Excited at the chance to meet Méliès again, René agrees to meet Isabelle and Hugo at Georges' home to show his copy of A Trip to the Moon.

Finding the heart-shaped key on the station railway tracks, Hugo drops down to the track to retrieve it, and is run over by an out-of-control train that smashes through the station. He wakes up from the nightmare, but hears an ominous ticking emanating from himself, and discovers he has been turned into the automaton. Hugo wakes up again: it was only another nightmare.

At Georges’ home, his wife Jeanne allows them in after René recognises her as Jeanne d'Alcy, an actress in many of Méliès' films. They play the film, waking Georges, who is finally convinced to cherish his accomplishments rather than regret his lost dreams. Georges recounts that, as a stage magician, he was fascinated by motion pictures and used film to create imaginative works through his Star Film Company. Forced into bankruptcy after the war, he closed his studio and sold his films. He laments that even an automaton he built and donated to a museum was lost; Hugo realizes it is the one he has repaired.

Hugo races to the station to retrieve the automaton, but is caught by Gustave, who has learned of Claude's death. Gustave threatens to take Hugo to the orphanage. Hugo runs away and manages to evade Gustave by hiding on the outer face of the clock tower, precariously balancing hundreds of feet above the ground. After climbing back down, Hugo races to escape the station but drops the automaton on the tracks. He jumps down to retrieve it and is almost run over by a train, but Gustave saves him and the automaton. Georges arrives and tells Gustave, "This boy belongs to me."

Some time later, Georges is named a professor at the Film Academy, and is paid tribute through a showcase of his films recovered by René. Hugo and his new family celebrate at the apartment, and Isabelle begins to write down Hugo's own story.

Production

Pre-Production

GK Films acquired the screen rights to The Invention of Hugo Cabret shortly after the book was published in 2007. Initially, Chris Wedge was signed in to direct the adaptation and John Logan was contracted to write the screenplay. The film was initially titled Hugo Cabret. Several actors were hired, including Ben Kingsley, Sacha Baron Cohen, Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz, and Helen McCrory. Jude Law, Ray Winstone, Christopher Lee, Frances de la Tour, and Richard Griffiths later joined the project. Hugo was originally budgeted at $100 million, but ran over with a final budget between $156 million and $170 million.[10] In February 2012, Graham King summed up his experience of producing Hugo: "Let's just say that it hasn't been an easy few months for me—there's been a lot of Ambien involved".

Filming

Principal photography began in London on June 29, 2010; the first shooting location was at the Shepperton Studios. The Nene Valley Railway near Peterborough also lent their original Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits rolling stock to the studio.

In August 2010, production moved to Paris for two weeks. Locations included the Sainte-Geneviève Library, the Sorbonne (where a lecture hall was converted into a 1930s cinema hall) in the 5th arrondissement, and the Théâtre de l'Athénée and its surrounding area in the 9th. High school Lycée Louis-le-Grand served as the film's base of operations in Paris; its cafeteria served 700 meals a day for the cast and crew.

Music

The film's soundtrack includes an Oscar-nominated original score composed by Howard Shore, and also makes prominent use of the Danse macabre by Camille Saint-Saëns and Gnossienne No. 1 by Erik Satie. Additional music was provided uncredited by French pianist and composer Jean-Michel Bernard. The singer Zaz performs on track 20, "Cœur volant".

Release/Reception/Box Office

The film was theatrically released on November 23, 2011, by Paramount Pictures, premiered at the NYFF on October 10, 2011, and was released on DVD and Blu-ray on February 28, 2012, by Paramount Home Entertainment. Hugo has grossed $34.3 million in home video revenue.

The film debuted on the streaming service Paramount+ on January 5, 2022.

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 93% based on 230 reviews, with an average rating of 8.30/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Hugo is an extravagant, elegant fantasy with an innocence lacking in many modern kids' movies, and one that emanates an unabashed love for the magic of cinema." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 83 out of 100, based on 41 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four out of four stars, saying that the film "is unlike any other film Martin Scorsese has ever made, and yet possibly the closest to his heart: a big-budget, family epic in 3-D, and in some ways, a mirror of his own life. We feel a great artist has been given command of the tools and resources he needs to make a movie about—movies." Peter Rainer of The Christian Science Monitor gave it a "B+" grade and termed it as "an odd mixture: a deeply personal impersonal movie" and concluded that "Hugo is a mixed bag but one well worth rummaging through." Christy Lemire said that the film had an "abundant love of the power of film; being a hardcore cinephile (like Scorsese) might add a layer of enjoyment, but it certainly isn't a prerequisite for walking in the door" besides being "slightly repetitive and overlong". Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune give it three stars and described it as "rich and stimulating even when it wanders," explaining "every locale in Scorsese's vision of 1931 Paris looks and feels like another planet. The filmmaker embraces storybook artifice as wholeheartedly as he relays the tale's lessons in the importance of film preservation." Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal said that Hugo "visually is a marvel, but dramatically it's a clockwork lemon".

Hugo was selected for the Royal Film Performance 2011 with a screening at the Odeon, Leicester Square, in London on 28 November 2011 in the presence of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall in support of the Cinema and Television Benevolent Fund. Richard Corliss of Time named it one of the Top 10 Best Movies of 2011, saying that "Scorsese's love poem, rendered gorgeously in 3-D, restores both the reputation of an early pioneer and the glory of movie history—the birth of a popular art form given new life through a master's application of the coolest new techniques". James Cameron called Hugo "a masterpiece" and that the film "had the best use of 3D he had seen," surpassing even his own acclaimed films.

Hugo earned $15.4 million over its Thanksgiving weekend debut. It went on to earn US$73,864,507 domestically and $111,905,653 overseas, for a worldwide gross of $185,770,160. Despite praise from critics, Hugo was cited as one of the year's notable box-office flops. Its perceived failure was due to competition with Disney's The Muppets and Summit's Breaking Dawn Part 1. The film was estimated to have had a net loss of $100 million. Producer Graham King said that the film's box-office results were painful. "There's no finger-pointing—I'm the producer and I take the responsibility," he said. "Budget-wise, there just wasn't enough prep time and no one really realized how complicated doing a 3D film was going to be. I went through three line-producers because no one knew exactly what was going on. Do I still think it's a masterpiece that will be talked about in 20 years? Yes. But once the schedule started getting out of whack, things just spiralled and spiralled and that's when the avalanche began."

Budget $150–170 million

Box office $185.8 million

My Review

While I have given "Hugo" a well-deserved 10, I am don't think this film is for everyone. Despite the advertising campaign which made it look like a kids' movie, it is NOT. Now I am NOT saying it had adult content. Despite being directed by Martin Scorsese ("Taxi Driver", "Goodfellas" and "Raging Bull"), it is very family-friendly--without cursing, sex or violence. But, I also think younger kids would be totally bored to tears by the film--particularly late in the movie. Don't bring kids younger than about 10--they will most likely feel restless the longer the film progresses.

Martin Scorsese's HUGO is a family movie that will probably only cater to a niche crowd: people who appreciate movies as art (e.g. cinema snobs, though I use the term endearingly). I'm not saying it won't appeal to the general masses. It's still an interesting story, wonderfully acted, and packed with talent both in front of and behind the camera. But let's face it: this isn't your average movie, it's a love letter. Scorsese has been a vocal supporter of restoring old movies in hopes they'll be saved from oblivion (rightfully so) and this movie, based on a children's book by Brian Selznick, is his method of beautifully pleading his case before millions of people who've probably refuse to watch black and white movies on the basis that they're, you know, black and white (yes, I know those sorts of people). HUGO is a film meant to bring out attention to the movies long-forgotten and remind us of the magic behind them, told through the adventure of a young boy named Hugo Cabret.

For folks like me, "Hugo" is an absolute must-see. I adore silent films and of the early silents, Georges Méliès is like a god. I have reviewed at least a hundred and have seen just about every existing film the man made...because they are THAT good. He was a brilliant early filmmaker who introduced lots of camera tricks and made extremely fanciful films. I could try to describe them further, but it's best you just see a few yourself. And, in addition to a plot that eventually turns to a homage of Méliès, it features clips from some of the great silents that I have long loved. In particular, a nice chunk of Harold Lloyd's "Safety Last" is included...as well as clips and posters from "The General", "The Kid", "Judex", "Fantome", "The Great Train Robbery" and many other seminal films any cinephile worth his salt would have seen and loved.

Why I loved this film is not just because it's a delightful homage to silent films (which, by the way, has made Scorsese practically a god among filmmakers to me). It's also because I have never seen a better use of 3-D and the film just looks exquisite--and it seems to have a lock on the Oscars for cinematography and art direction. Now I am NOT just talking about incorporating wonderful 3-D tricks into the film (like they did so well with "How to Train Your Dragon" with all the great flying sequences)--but integrating them in a more artistic manner that is not distracting but enhances the film throughout and makes you admire all the wonderful eye candy. I also loved the great use of computers to colorize flashback scenes to make them appear to be a nice homage to the early hand-coloured films of Méliès. And, when it's not in flashbacks, the film simply looks like you are in early 1930s Paris.

As I mentioned, this movie will only really appeal to certain people. Scorsese fans might be put off by the fact that this film is a family-friendly adventure; it doesn't exactly fall in line with Scorsese's usual subject matter. The family crowds will probably enjoy it, but younger children will likely be put off by it's slow pacing and lack of excitement. It's not so much an adventure as a journey of discovery, and little kids might not find themselves too involved in the story. Unfortunately, HUGO will probably be one of those films that fades into the background (if it hasn't already) and find most of it's loving coming from the film school crowds. The movie incorporates a loose interpretation of the life of Georges Méliès, a stage magician and an early innovator in world of cinema who realized the potential for the new medium of storytelling. At a time when most "movies" were just real-world situations recorded to celluloid (such as the famous train pulling into the station), Méliès created fantastic stories and mythical tales to entertain, filling his films with special effects and dramatic costuming. The movie focuses on the fact that so many of Méliès' films were lost over time and the tragedy of these classics from one of the earliest, most important filmmakers, ceasing to exist.

Finally, perhaps the best thing about the film is that it is so different. Watch the film and then try to think of another film that reminds you of "Hugo"--I seriously doubt if you'll be able to do this--the film is THAT unique!

Scorsese makes his message perfectly clear in the final half of the movie, which happened to be my favourite part of the film. Ben Kingsley is Papa Georges (Méliès) and, in the film, he is a defeated man who mourns the death of his legacy following World War I. Kingsley is perfect here and the highlight of the movie. The children in the film, Asa Butterfield and Chloë Moretz, do a serviceable job but, as is usually the case with younger actors, their performances come off as forced and wooden most times. Even Moretz, who's performances I freakin' loved in KICK-ASS, doesn't feel real here. Maybe it's just that Scorsese isn't accustomed to working with younger talent and wasn't able to bring out the best in them, but it's a shame because the two of them are the key players in the movie. There's a handful of other minor roles filling out the film with talent: Christopher Lee, Ray Winstone, Jude Law, etc.

My favourite would probably be Sascha Baron Cohen (yes, Borat) as the station inspector. With his Doberman patrolling by his side and the frame providing support for his bum leg, he was almost cartoonish. I loved him, and he was more than capable of toning down his usual eccentricity.

HUGO is a movie with a lot to love, even more if you're a cinema snob. I really enjoyed it, but a slow first act and weak performances from the kids mean it's far from perfect. HUGO has my full recommendation for anyone who might want a glimpse into world of a true film-lover. 10/10!!!!!