49th NYF: Scorsese’s ‘Hugo’ a Surprisingly Personal Journey into 3D

Try to resist reading anything about Martin Scorsese’s big-budget 3D kids movie — and latest masterpiece — Hugo beforehand, or watching any trailers. Go on a Lent-like fast, and in a month’s time, you can discover its wonderful secrets freshly, as did the packed crowd at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall on Monday, Oct. 10, 2011, for the New York Film Festival’s special work-in-progress sneak preview.

Once Scorsese came out to introduce the film, the audience seemed relieved that the “secret” premiere they had blindly bought tickets to would not require them to endure the plot-driven gloom of Fincher’s ‘Dragon Tattoo’ or the turgid torture promised by trailers of Eastwood’s ‘J. Edgar.’ People felt lively, in a strange venue, with strange glasses. Something special, it seemed, might be about to happen.

Scorsese’s intro was mainly a chance for him to compulsively enumerate all of the things that were NOT finished with the film: not color corrected, temp sound mix, temp score (let’s hope Howard Shore keeps the French folk-inspired feel — and the accordion), some visual effects unfinished (a few shots appeared only as computer graphic models).

It didn’t matter — the few inchoate parts could not intrude on the movie’s entrancing, lovely spell. A return to form after the lifeless ‘Shutter Island,’ ‘Hugo’ is not hired-hand work, nor is it merely a technological or genre exercise. It is one of Scorsese’s most personal and moving films.

The main character is Hugo, a young orphan watched over only by a drunken uncle, who lives inside the walls of a Paris train station and anonymously keeps all the public clocks on time. The lone inheritance from his dead father is an “automaton,” a mechanical man that, despite all of Hugo’s ingenious fiddling, remains dormant. Until one day, when it whirs to life and delivers a message that is the key to Hugo’s past, and more importantly, his future …

A young asthmatic Scorsese observed the street life of Little Italy from his tenement window; so Hugo detachedly observes the endless human flux in the train station from his secluded perch behind the ancient station clock. Even more powerfully, Scorsese addresses for the first time directly, through Hugo’s interaction with Ben Kingsley’s faded toymaker, his own personal relationship with his cinematic idol, and personal mentor and friend, Michael Powell.

Scorsese’s use of 3D provides an intricate, painterly depth to the images, immersing us in the world rather than having the world leap out at us. He and long-time editor Thelma Schoonmaker have put together several kinetic, propulsive sequences, including one involving a possible train crash. This is an atypical kids movie in many ways, first and foremost in that it isn’t really plot-driven. There’s a mystery to be solved, and a tracking down of clues, but ultimately Scorsese is more interested in taking his time to craft atmosphere and character. There are no evil supernatural monsters to battle, nor is the fate of the world at stake. Hugo has an antagonist, but not really an enemy in a station patrolman. The real enemy in ‘Hugo’ is that faced by many people: loneliness, stifled hopes, forgotten dreams.

Again, best not to know too much. Suffice to say, the film addresses, particularly in its stirring third act, the passion for moviemaking itself. For those who have a love of cinema, either as enthusiasts, critics, or as the mad, half-doomed crazies who want to make movies, ‘Hugo’ will strike a surprisingly deep chord, one which will reverberate long after you leave the theater.