BEFORE: I'm still feeling unsettled, I don't know if it's the fact that my cold still hasn't gone away (though it's diminished back down to a head cold again), or the lingering annoyance that I didn't get to start Year 6 the way I wanted. Maybe I just need to keep going and get back to a full work week. Linking from "Madagascar 3", Sacha Baron Cohen carries over.
THE PLOT: Set in 1930s Paris, an orphan who lives in the walls of a train station is wrapped up in a mystery involving his late father and an automaton.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" (Movie #1,539)
AFTER: This nicely continues my inadvertent theme of "Identity", though in this case the film is more about "Purpose". But that's connected, because what a character does is part of who a character is. And everyone here has a part to play - we see the train station through Hugo's eyes as he watches from above, and some people manage shops, others make sure the trains run correctly, and some maintain order. This is another great connection to "Madagascar 3", which featured a French (OK, Monacan? Monaconian?) animal officer. Sacha Baron Cohen plays a train station inspector, but both represent strong villain characters - so from two films we can extrapolate that all French lawmen (and women) are stubborn, relentless and single-minded.
Hugo has a purpose - he winds and maintains all of the clocks in a train station. This is set before all clocks were electric, and all ran by the turning of giant gears and giant doohickeys, and the swinging of great pendulums and such. But Hugo is still searching for something, which we eventually learn has to do with the loss of his father, and the repair of a machine that his father salvaged, and Hugo's belief that fixing the machine will somehow settle things. And in a way it does, but in a very unexpected way.
The reason that I considered this a follow-up to that Tom Hanks film about 9/11 is that based on what little I knew about both films, they seemed very similar. Oh, sure, one's set in NYC in 2011, and the other's set in Paris in the 1930's, but both feature young boys who lost their fathers, and who go on a seemingly random quest for some perhaps related meaning, and in both cases a key plays a central role in solving the puzzle - that's a pretty big coincidence, I think.
But it seems that Hugo's purpose is helping other people discover or re-discover their own purpose, either directly or indirectly. Working for a shopkeeper sets off a chain of events that relate to the early history of film itself, when silent films were first made and considered a form of magic of their own. His actions also help others in the train station make connections of their own, but the main storyline seems to focus on the shopkeeper and the life he had before the war.
However, I've got the same problem I had with "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close", in that the story's progress is forwarded by coincidences, some so improbable that they seem impossible. The chance that Hugo's father would find an item that relates so directly to people who his son would later encounter - I'm not believing this. Sure, it's a story, and all things are possible in fiction, but I have to believe in the way that people find each other and make connections, and Paris is a big city and all, so I can't believe that just somehow are all connected already in some way, but they're just not aware of it.
I guess maybe I've seen coincidences happen, it's like finding out your friend is dating someone who knows your boss. Things like that are weird, but they happen. And I guess you've got to figure that famous or prominent people just seem to know more people, and that increases the odds right there. But it still bugs me.
However, I enjoyed all of the references to early films, like Harold Lloyd's "Safety Last" and Buster Keaton's "The General", plus "From the Earth to the Moon" and the films of the Lumiere Brothers. I realize they changed a few facts about the production of those films, but some allowances had to be made to make all of the pieces fit. There's a nice connection made here between movies and dreams, and that all makes sense - someone has to dream up a movie before it's made, and people's dreams often closely resemble movies. I wonder if dreams looked the same before movies were invented.
NITPICK POINT: The film is set in Paris, and nearly every sign or book title seen on screen is in both French and English - so why are all the accents British? I realize that British actors are more common and more available, but other actors had to learn accents - so why not learn a proper French one? Hollywood has had a real obsession with French culture in the last couple years - "Les Miserables", "The Artist", "War Horse", "The Adventures of Tintin", "Midnight in Paris" - so why be all half-assed about it and allow everyone to sound so wrong? Do filmmakers really think that Americans will just think the characters sound European and leave it at that? The only actor here who even attempted anything close to a French accent was Sacha Baron Cohen, and that seemed largely for comic effect - but I salute him for giving it a go.
Also starring Ben Kingsley (last seen in "Iron Man 3"), Asa Butterfield (last seen in "The Wolfman"), Chloe Grace Moretz (last seen in "Dark Shadows"), Christopher Lee (ditto), Ray Winstone (last seen in "Cold Mountain"), Emily Mortimer (last seen in "Our Idiot Brother"), Richard Griffiths (last seen in "Guarding Tess"), Jude Law (last heard in "Rise of the Guardians"), with a cameo from the director, Martin Scorsese.
RATING: 5 out of 10 croissants
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