Scorsese's Hugo

          Up until Wednesday night, Hugo by Martin Scorsese was a film I had never seen. I had seen
the previews for it when it came out in 2012, but I had just thought it was about a boy and some sort of humanoid machine. As per usual, I wrote Hugo off as a movie that would in no way interest me. Machines have never really been my thing. I had heard a couple times that the film was referred to as "Scorsese's love letter to early cinema," but I just figured that was because it took place in 19th century France, where the Lumiere Brothers made the first motion picture. Even though France, and everything about it, has always interested me, I had no urge to rush out to the movies and spend an arm and a leg to see it. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would have found it as mesmerizingly beautiful as I did, and regret not contributing to its box office profits.
          If I could sum up the movie in just one word (not an easy thing to do) I would have to choose enchanting. My brain flip flopped back and forth between words like beautiful and amazing, but it was so much more than those mundane words could describe. Enchant means to delight to a high degree, while enchanting means charming or captivating. It seemed the only word in the entire English language that adequately summarize how in awe I was. The first aspect of the film that I fell in love with were the characters. When it comes to fiction, without an interesting medium, it can be nigh impossible to reach an audience on a personal level. But as we get to know our protagonist, Hugo, it becomes just as impossible to not fall in love with his innocence, despite his recourse to thievery. We can all relate to bad things happening to us, and this little boy has had all that we can think of and then some happen. Even after the death of his clock maker father, his love for mechanics and tinkering burns even brighter. The automaton is probably the most interesting aspect of the entire film. Barring any sort of modern technology, I had never heard of anything like a mechanical man able to do a human task. And trying to put myself in this certain time period, it completely boggled me to think technology like that had existed in that era. Even though his father was killed during the restoration of this automaton, Hugo's need to find the bots' purpose in memory of his father spoke legions of the love they shared - both for each other, and for the wonders of machinery.
         Not only was Hugo portrayed to the greatest extent, but the story was so magical and romantic that it's hard to imagine how modern films have fallen so far. Not to say all movies today are awful, but seeing the work and dedication it took to make the first movies entails a sort of magic that is lost in cinema today. It must have been so beyond belief to see the first movies, something that had only been dreamed until then. Before George Melies, and the rest of the forefathers of cinema, dreams had been saved for sleep. A concept that had been unattainable for so long. It used to take so much work on everyone's part to make a dreams a reality, and now its all cold computers with not nearly any of the love and pride that came from making only movies. This truly was Scorsese's dedication to the mastery of the first film makers, and how magical he believed them to be.