Hugo – the movie

Opening in 3D was Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo.” Adapted from Brian Selznick’s book “The Magical Invention of Hugo Cabret,” “Hugo” tells the story of orphaned 12-year old Hugo Cabret, who lived between the walls of a Paris train station in the early 1930s.

Hugo’s father was a master clockmaker who is killed in a sudden fire. Hugo’s Uncle Claude apprentices Hugo to service the many clocks of the train station, where there are living quarters between the walls. Claude is often drunk, so Hugo soon assumes resonsibility for the clockworks. One of Hugo’s legacies from his father is a broken automaton, a mechanical man that writes. If Hugo can fix it, Hugo thinks the automaton will deliver a message from his father.

In pursuit of this goal, Hugo meets the toy seller, Papa Georges, and his goddaughter, Isabelle. Hugo lost his father’s blueprints of the automaton to the toy seller. He befriends Isabelle partly to gain access to them. When he learns Isabelle has never seen a film, he takes her to the movies in a rather unconventional way. With Isabelle’s help, Hugo repairs the automaton. It writes a message not from Hugo’s father but from Isabelle’s godfather: it draws a scene from a movie Hugo’s father described to him. The toy seller was once the magician and filmmaker Georges Méliès and the automaton was one of his creations. Through the help of the children, Georges Méliès rediscovers his past and enlightens a new generation of film buffs.

Starring Sir Ben Kingsley as Papa Georges, Asa Butterfield as Hugo, Chloë Grace Moretz as Isabelle and Jude Law as Hugo’s father, “Hugo” is not just for children; this flim will resonate with adults. In “Hugo,” the 3D effects are part of the storytelling, adding depth and intensity to the tale. The film’s references to the early days of flimmaking are part homage to the real-life Georges Méliès, who invented multiple exposures and time-lapse photography. The automaton in “Hugo” draws a scene from Méliès’ 1902 film “A Trip to the Moon.”