Movie Review: Hugo (2011)

A love letter to the origins of movie making, Martin Scorsese's Hugo is a story of loss and wondrous discovery through the eyes of children.

The setting is Paris in the early 1930s. 12 year old Hugo (Asa Butterfield) is an orphan living in the Montparnasse train station, operating the large clocks while evading the orphan-hunting station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen). Hugo idolized his father (Jude Law), and together they were fixing an old automaton when dad died in a fire. Hugo continues work on the automaton by stealing components from the toy store of the surly Papa Georges (Ben Kingsley).

After Papa catches the young boy in the act, Hugo meets the toy-seller's adventure-loving goddaughter Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz) and introduces her to the joy of watching movies. Together they finish fixing the automaton, and it reveals a visual clue related to legendary French filmmaker Georges Méliès. Hugo and Isabelle must now understand the clue's significance, a quest that introduces them to film historian René Tabard (Michael Stuhlbarg) and Papa's wife Jeanne (Helen McCrory).

The most un-Scorsese movie made by Martin Scorsese, Hugo is a child-friendly unabashed salute to the early days of cinema and the magical spell cast by moving pictures on the young and old. The healing properties of the flickering screen, from lifting spirits to changing life trajectories, are captured with loving affection through the experiences of curious children intent on finding adventure.

The film is slow to start, as Scorsese uses young Hugo (a vibrant Asa Butterfield) as an entry point to the grand world of a bustling train station. With frequently fluid and exploratory camerawork, Montparnasse is revealed as a public place teaming with travelers and workers, but also a private refuge where Hugo is stranded after the death of his father and disappearance of his uncle (the Dickinsian Ray Winstone). He uses his wits and talent to survive, inexorably drawn to the shop of Papa Georges to surreptitiously secure parts needed to repair the automaton.

Once Hugo befriends Papa's goddaughter Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz nailing the mischievous book lover with a penchant for over elaborate words) and the automaton reveals its secret, the film gains unstoppable nostalgic momentum. The past and the present come together to chart a new future, and Scorsese taps into a deep river of admiration for his industy's pioneers.

The film features several nods to the earliest achievements placed on film, including Train Pulling into a Station (Hugo's setting is no coincidence), Harold Lloyd's Safety Last! (neither are the clocks) and Georges Méliès's A Trip To The Moon. Meanwhile, the automaton central to the story is familiar from Metropolis.

Hugo is not without its faults. The film unnecessarily extends beyond two hours, with a few too many scenes of the Inspector and his dog chasing kids around the station. The whimsy factor sometimes trips into overindulgence, Scorsese seemingly entranced by the hidden maze of hallways connecting all the gears operating the station clocks.

But with a distinctive visual style, the transformative power of creativity easily rises to the top. Despite confinement to the forgotten corners of a train station, Hugo still uncovers the gateway to new worlds through the projector's flicker.

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Movie Review: The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas (2008)

A view of the holocaust from the perspective of the young German son of a concentration camp commander, The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas is a drama of tragic awakening.

In Berlin during World War Two, Ralf (David Thewlis) is a senior army commander, and receives a promotion to oversee a concentration camp in a secluded rural area. He relocates his family, consisting of wife Elsa (Vera Farmiga), 12 year old daughter Gretel (Amber Beattie) and 8 year old son Bruno (Asa Butterfield), to a large mansion near the camp. The move is tough on Bruno, who has to give up all his friends.

After encountering a Jewish former doctor now forced into slave labour, Bruno still has limited understanding of what is going on and believes the camp to be a farm. He eventually ventures out to explore and reaches the camp's outer perimeter, where across the security fence he befriends a prisoner his age named Shmuel (Jack Scanlon). Meanwhile the atrocities at the camp drive a wedge between Elsa and Ralf, while Gretel is indoctrinated in Nazi propaganda and buys into the hateful ideology.

The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas explores the lack of awareness and divisions among Germans relative to the holocaust. Director Mark Herman adapted the 2006 book by John Boyne, and follows young Bruno, a naturally curious and playful 8 year old, as he is yanked from his familiar Berlin surroundings and into the docile countryside. There he fights boredom and strings clues together about the "farm" next door, but still has difficulty understanding the magnitude of the horror being perpetuated.

The film runs an efficient 94 minutes, and while little time is created for meaningful character arcs, Herman also avoids dawdling and melodrama. This is a clear-headed, schmaltz free stance, presenting facts within and outside the family as discovered by a child. The flickers of protest start with Bruno's grandma, who disapproves of Nazi ideology and is not afraid to speak her mind. Later an officer reporting to dad Ralf reveals his family secret, and finally mom Elsa reaches the breaking point where Nationalism yields to abhorrence.

Bruno's sister Gretel is young enough to be brainwashed and represents the ease with which a virulent ideology can spread. Books full of hate taught by a scrupulous instructor soon transform her into a loyal young advocate for the regime. Bruno is not immune: Herman offers a stark reminder of the power of propaganda films on immature minds.

Meanwhile Bruno is also exposed to helpful farmers who used to be doctors, chimney stacks belching black smoke at regular intervals, and a young boy like himself but always wearing pyjamas and confined to the other side of the fence. The world is what it is, and Bruno tries to make sense of it the only way a child knows, by exploring, making new play friends, and displaying natural human kindness not yet stifled by hatred.

In keeping with the film's tone, Herman works his way to a grounded resolution. In one of the darkest chapters of human history, one child's story is but a fragile ray of light.

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