HUGO - Best Picture? Really?

Hugo
2011

Remember the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”? (If not, you can read this charming story for free at http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type1620.html.)

Before the end credits rolled for Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo”, the comparison was fully implanted in my brain. More on “Hugo” later.

Scorsese is a giant in the film industry. He has directed more than fifty movies, many brilliant and appropriately lauded. Dramas like “Taxi Driver”, “Raging Bull”, “Goodfellas” and documentaries like “The Last Waltz” and “Shine a Light” are just a few of his award worthy works. His creative contributions aside, he will probably be remembered and appreciated for his passion for the history of film and its preservation.

That is why “Hugo”, this tribute to the earliest days of movie making in France is such a disappointment. “Hugo” had a budget of $170,000,000. If you watch the entire two hour plus film, you will see every dollar of that budget invested in beautiful cinematography, elaborate sets, incredible special effects, and whatever it costs to film in 3D. But an interesting script? Well edited? Couldn’t see it.

Scorsese’s vision in sharing the origins of the process of cinema and sharing the archived footage, though noble, is wrapped loosely around an orphan waif’s existence in a bustling train station. Neither a charming Asa Butterfield, as the young Hugo nor a stoic Ben Kingsley as the French film pioneer Georges Méliès could out best the spectacular runaway train sequence or the vast panoramas of the lights of Paris.

If only Scorsese had made a documentary about his passion for film and its history and left the fairy tale telling to Hans Christian Andersen. Evidently, the voters of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, like the townspeople in Andersen’s story, see substance (a la clothing) where there is none.