HUGO (2011)

HUGO (vt Hugo Cabret, The Invention of Hugo Cabret; see IMDb for other titles ). Martin Scorsese, dir., prod. (one of several). John Logan, script, from The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick. USA: GK Films, Infinitum Nihil (prod.) / Paramount Pictures (N. American dist. [see IMDb for details of distribution ]), 2011. In both 2-D and 3-D.

HUGO is mostly set in a train station in Paris ca. 1930, with Hugo a boy living in architectural interstices behind the walls and taking care of the station's clocks. IMDb had difficulty settling on a genre for the film; for the purposes here, it is a relatively realistic, strongly "metacinematic," romantic children's film with an undertone of urban fantasy. See for clocks — many clocks, a central automaton, movie cameras and projectors, and strong sympathy for machines while acknowledging the danger. HUGO uses the image of a potentially lethal locomotive about to run over a child, Hugo, but it also has orphaned Hugo wishing the world were a machine since all the parts of a machine fit together and work together; in a mechanical world, he'd have a place and a function. For a good introduction to the film, see the Wikipedia entry and Steward Klawans's "Cranks and Cogwheels" rev. in The Nation 293.26 (26 Dec. 2011); 35-37..

5. DRAMA, RDE, 00/IX/11, corrected (but not retitled) 1Mar19