Hugo (Martin Scorsese, 2011): USA

Reviewed by Tamara Mamukelashvili. Viewed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

    Martin Scorsese knows exactly how to leave his master hand print on peoples heart. He’s known as best of the best filmmakers and I don’t think anyone who understands art of filmmaking will disagree on this remark. Mr Scorsese is known with his phenomenal gangster genre films that involves violence, drama and slight sarcastic sense of humor as well as his mind blowing and charismatic ways of telling the story through mise-en-scene. Yet he knows how to surprise us and make us fall in love with a dream world he creates for us on the screen, with a genre he has never created before.

I watched the film Hugo and I was speechless of the astonishing 3D journy he created. Describing in few sentences what Hugo is about is quite difficult as it highlights so many different meanings and ideas for different age groups. For the kids its an adventure, for older audience it’s the history of the cinema, morals and how everything in life has a meaning and most importantly we learn quite a bit about Scorsese himself, as a filmmaker, as a walking encyclopedia of cinema and what it means to him, what got him into filmmaking.

The story is about a boy, who’s an orphan. In the beginning of the movie, just before his father died, they were in the process of fixing a mechanical figure that writes, that Hugo thinks is a message from his father, therefore as the film develops hugo is trying to find bits and peaces to complete fixing the automaton and on the way meets remarkable characters that become the backbone stories of the film and part of magical journey that made everyone in the audience smile, cry and in some moments even get angry.
I had a chance to see Mr Scorsese at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on Monday, January 30, 2012 and hearing him speak about this film and how important it is to him, made this film even more emotional and special than it was when I first saw it. Scorsese always puts his heart and soul into his project and this project definitely touched and left a mark on many peoples hearts and souls.

The performances in this film were inexplicable and superior. Sir Ben kingsley did a remarkable job as Georges Méliès, seeing Sasha Baron Cohen in this kind of character, after Borat and many of his other, very different roles, was mind blowing. Last but not least the kids, Asa Butterfield and Chloë Grace Moretz gave dynamic performances and lead the film perfectly. Wonderful film and I would recommend anyone, any age to watch it. It will not be hard to believe it was nominated on 11 oscars.