A Tribute to Scorsese's Cinematic Virtuosity Despite Clear Flaws

Rating: 7/10 (18 March 2012)

If a movie was judged solely by its cinematic dazzle and sheer appreciation of the wonders of the medium, then Martin Scorsese's virtuosic 2011 adventure drama should have taken home the Best Picture Oscar hands down. However, there is something overly meticulous and dramatically inert in the execution that somehow makes the film miss its mark for me emotionally. As much as I admired all the technical achievements presented here, I felt a bit of a chill when it came to the emotional elements. Adapted by John Logan ("The Aviator") from Brian Selznick's historic fiction novel, "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" (2007), the fanciful story centers on Hugo, a twelve-year-old urchin who lives within the walls of Paris' Gare Montparnasse railway station in 1931. His father was a master clockmaker who took Hugo to see the early films of cinematic pioneer Georges Méliès (1902's "A Trip to the Moon) and was working on his most ambitious project, repairing a mechanical robot who could write with a pen, when he died suddenly in a fire.
Hugo is taken away by his drunkard uncle, who took care of the main railway clock until he disappeared one night. All the while, the boy obsesses over finishing his father's project by pilfering gears and other parts he finds in the station toy shop run by none other than Méliès who has fallen on hard times. Now an embittered man, he take's Hugo's prized notebook with all his father's notes and threatens to burn it as punishment. However, Méliès decides to let the boy earn back the parts he stole by working in the shop. Hugo also meets Méliès' precocious goddaughter, an orphan named Isabelle who is a bit older than him. They bond immediately with he taking her to the movies for the first time and she leading him to the key that unlocks the mechanical man's programmed capabilities. Through quite a few convolutions in the plot, including an elaborate dream sequence, the connection between Méliès and his earlier groundbreaking work is finally recognized and celebrated.
Finally back in a top-grade production, Ben Kingsley plays the gruff and mysterious filmmaker-turned-toyshop owner with the ideal mix of austerity and frustration. Chloë Grace Moretz ("Kick-Ass") is also winning and immensely likable as Isabelle. The same can't be quite said about Asa Butterfield's ("The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas") sullen performance in the title role. The young actor has the immense weight of the story on his shoulders, but he doesn't provide enough conviction to gravitate the heart to Hugo's plight. The most problematic performance is Sacha Baron Cohen's ("Borat") slapstick-driven turn as the station inspector. It's not so much the stunt-casting aspect as it is the anomalous approach he takes in making the character strangely menacing with little redeeming value. Much smaller roles are taken by Jude Law as Hugo's father and Emily Mortimer as a flower girl. Scorsese's visual team has done near-flawless work here, starting with production designer Dante Ferretti and cinematographer Robert Richardson, both of whom bring 1930's Paris to vivid life with exacting detail and burnished brushstrokes.