Hugo reminded me of all the things that I love about cinema. The craftmanship in it, a good story, straight forward or cut to the chase (not as populated that you get lost in the parade of characters) but most of all that passion can be as sublime as devastating if you lose it.
Opening today in the U.S. and Canada (Mexico will have to wait for December 30th) Hugo tells the story of a little out casted boy named Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas). The son of a watchmaker whose forced to live inside the metro station’s clock after his father died. Over there he lives from the little things he can grab from the stores but he has something his father left before he died as a working in progress: an automaton. An automaton is a self-operating machine. We could say they’re the grandfathers of robots as the idea is the same. Most of them worked with winded power, with a similar operational machine as a watch inside, you’ll see what I mean when you’re watching the movie, is very well illustrated.
Hugo’s obsession with his father legacy draws him to a bitter encounter with a toy shop owner at the station. Little he knew that man was once a famous director called George Méliés (Ben Kingsley).
This is the first 3D movie for Martin Scorsese but also the first film in many years. He pays a very beautiful, magic and very well deserved homage to the story of cinema and his passion for film, at a very good timing as a few weeks ago the good old film cameras had ceased to produced passing the torch to HD cameras and 3D cameras.
http://collider.com/film-camera-production-ended-arri-panavision-aaton/120103/
it is indeed the end of an era as Scorsese told in many interviews already. It is understandable that this kind of things happens but can we still call film a film when they’re not made anymore on the beloved film strip?Méliès on the other hand is more than one of the film pioneers. He was also was also considered for many film scholars the first one to give film the magic of telling a story. Invented by the Lumière brothers in France, Mélliès once a magician, bumped into cinema as we see in Hugo on a fair. He was a pioneer of story telling, narrative techniques, special effects and yes color cinema as he tinted his films frame by frame. No wonder over the years many film directors had payed an homage to Méliès great films. On the movie Scorsese tell us a little bit about film history and the magic of movie in the early day. It was as magical as delightful.
El Kiosko Magazine 