Why Hugo gets my vote for Best Picture

Rating: 10/10 (17 February 2012)

I'm a latecomer to Hugo. I only took it in a few days ago, in February of 2012. I'd seen a trailer for it last year. My recollection of that: "Well this looks sorta fun.. another kid's story they hope will also appeal to adults. Probably another Disney/Pixar type thing, but with live actors plus 3D this time. I enjoyed Cars, Toys, Inc., etc. I'll take it in if I find time."
Then last week a buddy said, "We should see this movie Hugo. It's getting all kinds of nominations." I needed a push to drive somewhere to see a kid's movie just then, but ultimately we met up for a (cheaper) Saturday matinée. With no great expectations, I kindly lowered my 3D shades when told to. It took me awhile to figure out where they were going with these frankly stunning, snowy, fairytale-like shots skimming over 1920-something Paris. The camera eventually led us into a gigantic and bustling central station, romantically old-fashioned to our eye, yet golden and sparklingly with-it in this, its glory day. Fashionable Parisians were scurrying around shops and boarding steam-billowing trains. We're following a wide-eyed, clever but sad boy, Hugo, played by a quick, intuitive young actor, perhaps akin to Daniel Radcliffe as we first met him as Harry Potter. By no means his twin, but with the same, or perhaps even more striking innate sense of confidence on a movie set. We watch as his loving father dies and leaves the boy an orphan to fend for himself as a thieving stowaway in this brick monument to technology. His watchmaker father has left him an old and forgotten museum piece to finish piecing back together. It's a 90% scale mechanical man made of tin, cams and gears. From the kind but very curious expression on its face, it's clear that this over-sized wind-up once must have performed some miraculous feat, but what? I'll leave you with that as far as storyline goes.
Just prepare yourself for the least expected.
Although Hugo is in part about a young boy's struggle to solve a riddle, what he discovers is far beyond mere kid's stuff. It's a shockingly beautiful lesson on so much you likely don't know about man's sheer delight in –and need for– unfettered imagination, creativity and our ingenuity and tenacity to make magic become reality. On one level, children can love it, but quite honestly, the truly magnificent depth of field you'll grasp and the exhilaration you'll feel having lived on earth awhile, will be lost on youth, but is shown as a gift for each of us to pass on to them.
Though no filmmaker, I was born in the heart of Hollywood, so perhaps the magic of moving pictures is in my blood. Nevertheless, this cutting-edge tribute to every step mankind has achieved in cinematic art and technology, our drive and creativity to surpass that which has gone before stunned the living daylights out of me and brought streams of tears to my eyes. See Hugo immediately.