Hugo in 3D

HUGO in 3D                            B+                  

USA  (127 mi)  2011  d:  Martin Scorsese  Official Facebook    Official Site  book website

No one questions Martin Scorsese’s sincerity when it comes to movies, as he’s a director obsessed with the history of movies, supporting the video releases of lesser known directors that may have received little exposure initially, and is one of the most outspoken advocates supporting film preservation.  He is perhaps the most knowledgeable American professor on the subject of cinema, as it’s a world he knows inside and out, being the elder statesman of American directors, having made movies since the late 1960’s, including two of the most critically acclaimed films ever made, RAGING BULL (1980) and GOODFELLAS (1990).  Everyone may have a different favorite, but no one disputes his mastery of the art form.  As a child, his mother thought it odd that he insisted on watching Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s THE RED SHOES (1948) over and over again, as he was mesmerized by the construction of such an enchantingly beautiful film. Throughout his career, most all of his films have catered to adult subject matter, where language alone, let alone excessive violence, may not be suitable for smaller children.  With this film, a screen adaptation of Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret, a book which won the Caldecott Medal in 2008 for the most distinguished children’s picture book, Scorsese has finally found the right source material to make his first children’s film.  While the book is 533 pages, more than half are pencil drawings by the author where the illustrations are used to balance the way the story is told and ultimately understood, so a supremely gifted visual artist could only enhance the experience, which Scorsese chose to render in 3D, another first in his career.  The 3D glasses do darken the already darkened atmosphere, but also offer a bit of playfulness to some of the scenes, perhaps stretching the imagination somewhat, especially seeing 100-year old historic archival footage in 3D, which has never been done before, but they are by no means necessary to appreciate this film, which has a wonderful story.  However, with Scorsese at the helm, why not opt for the best?

From the opening shot, we’re quickly reminded of the overly cute, Frenchified version of Paris in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s AMELIE (2001), which features swooping camera shots and picture postcard panoramas, as the camera pulls the viewers into an extended sequence that sweeps across the city landscape, guiding us past historical monuments through the Parisian streets and into a busy train station, finally resting upon the eyes of a young child perched high atop a rooftop looking out over the station below, peering through an inside opening of a clock tower.  But this is not your typical children’s adventure story, despite the French accordions playing as people in the crowded streets of Paris run right past one another, bypassing the friendly shops and outdoor café’s, creating a stampede effect in order to get to their trains on time.  Hugo (Asa Butterfield) is the child in the opening shot, a bright young boy cloistered away living high above the fray through the ventilation ducts and cavernous back passageways in a darkened 1930’s world filled with blowing steam and giant churning gears constantly turning, where the clicking sound is everpresent as he’s literally living behind the elevated clocks of the train station, like Quasimoto or The Phantom of the Opera.  In flashback sequences, his father (Jude Law) taught him to fix clocks and develop a fascination for fixing things, tinkering with various spare parts that he finds or steals, along with handfuls of food, but his father and his uncle die, so he now lives a Dickensian existence on his own, an orphan secretly inheriting the family job of winding all the clocks at the station so that they run on time.  His real life’s obsession, however, is trying to repair an automaton, an item discarded and rescued by his father from a museum, a small steel creature in the form of a human that runs on gears and springs and wires.  But so far Hugo has been stumped at making it work. 

Instead Hugo’s regularly harassed by the bumbling train inspector (Sasha Baron Cohen) and his vicious Doberman tracking hound, threatening to send any loitering orphans to the orphanage, which he does with a sadistic relish, an orphan of the war himself taking pride in carrying out his civic responsibilities by bullying and manhandling the little buggers, throwing them in a tiny locked cage like one might do with an escaped pet.  Hugo is also mistreated by a grumpy old man with a continuous scowl on his face that runs a toy shop (Ben Kingsley), who’s constantly berating Hugo as a thief as he’s forever stealing tiny parts needed for clock repairs.  The old man absconds with Hugo’s secret notebook, the one given to him by his father with all the drawings on how to construct the automaton, where he’s hoping it will help him figure out how to make it work.  When the old man threatens to burn it, Hugo follows him to his home where in the window he sees his goddaughter Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz), a girl about his same age, so he pleads for her help in the matter.  Something of a bookworm, she’s more interested in an adventure, so the two set out together on a mission of discovery, where she wears around her neck a secret key that may mysteriously help with the automaton, but also includes her first trip to the cinema watching Harold Lloyd’s dangling rooftop clock sequence in SAFETY LAST (1923) harold Lloyd Safety Last (on YouTube 5:55) and regular visits to the library where the elderly librarian (Christopher Lee) directs them to books on the history of cinema, which opens up a whole new world.  Apparently this is a movie for kids with intelligence who aren’t afraid of difficult or complicated emotions and love to find things in the dusty bins at the library, much like the director's own childhood.  Even as this film initially meanders to find its footing, Scorsese fills the screen with a rich and meticulous tapestry of vivid detail, always dazzling the eye with visual originality and flair.

Saving the best for last, through a series of spectacular flashback sequences, the grumpy old man, Isabelle’s godfather, is none other than George Méliès, one of the founding fathers of cinema, who around the turn of the century made a collection of moving pictures that specialized in magic acts and special effects, like disappearing heads or dancing skeletons, flying objects, missiles to the moon, mermaids and underwater sea creatures, all of which Scorsese lovingly recreates here and were thought destroyed during WWI when movie interest waned and Méliès was forced to sell his celluloid prints, as requisitioned by the Army, which melted them down for the liquid contents in making boot heels.  With Hugo’s rabid interest in rediscovering these films, Scorsese has a field day bombarding the viewers with a mesmerizing collage of turn of the century films, updated in 3D, offering special visualizations never before seen or even imagined.  This is a bonanza of unique discoveries, nothing less than spectacular, including hand print colorizing, something Guy Maddin used to love to do, offering a one-of-a-kind glimpse into the birth of cinema as conceived by none other than America’s reigning film historian.  This is a child’s adventure story where the world of adults is threatening and occasionally hurtful, but one that’s constantly changing and inventively different, that offers a chance at real discovery, where if you pursue your curiosity in life, you just might find your interests could change the shape and vision of the world.  This is a film near and dear to Scorsese’s heart, as who would have thought some kid from the Little Italy neighborhood in New York City, where he witnessed firsthand how gamblers and mobsters ran their underworld rackets, would end up becoming one of the foremost film historians and preservationists, not to mention one of the premiere artists of the past century.  This is a spellbinding trip to the movies that becomes an excursion into the history of movies itself—delightful.

The River (Renoir)

THE RIVER                             B+

France  India  USA  (99 mi)  1951  d:  Jean Renoir

As literary an adaptation of a movie as you’re ever likely to see, quite unlike anything else, the last of Renoir’s American films and his first in color, an extraordinarily colorful film shot by the director’s nephew Claude on location in India using a documentary style, but also a rather stiff dramatic portrayal of the characters.  Son of the great impressionist painter Auguste Renoir, this is a family that thrives on art and its observant portrait of class in society.  An adaptation of Rumer Godden's adolescent coming-of-age novel of a young 14-year old girl growing up on the banks of the Ganges River in British colonialist India, this entire film plays out like a poetic reverie, a memory play narrated by the author’s thoughts, giving this a feeling of impressionist exploration of the nearby locale.  Harriet (Patricia Walters), is a plain girl who is not particularly attractive, a kind rarely seen in the movies, yet she’s fond of writing in her diary, knowing much of it is actually well written despite her youthful age, describing her interior thoughts along with revelatory descriptions of the river, including the boats, the crowded marketplace, and people washing their clothes, all in harmony with the timeless quality of the river.  This is her secret world, introducing European culture into the more Eastern philosophy of India where Buddha reigns supreme.  Harriet lives with a large family where she is the eldest of 5 children, where her world changes with the arrival next door of a wounded war veteran, Captain John (Thomas E. Breen), who lost a leg in combat.   His presence captivates the interest of not only Harriet, but her slightly older, more spoiled best friend Valerie (Adrienne Corri) and a mixed race daughter about the same age, Melanie (Radha), who has returned home after being educated in the West.    

Looking very much like a Powell/Pressburger film, using plenty of close up shots, where all the principals but Melanie have blazingly red hair, this is largely an idealized portrait of a family, where the idea of happiness in a colonialist country must undergo some alterations due to the complexity of the experience, as British freedom is not Indian freedom.  Without ever addressing the political divisions, Renoir instead simply shows a chilly relationship between the two cultures, where they don’t exactly mix despite living side by side with one another.  Indians are the British servants, while others are neighbors, but none are featured players.  Instead this plays out like a Vicente Minnelli production, where the highly colorful compositions are first and foremost, accented by Indian music constantly playing in the background, with a continuous stream of everpresent shots of boats and people on the river.  Harriet’s coming of age is paralleled with India’s push for freedom as well, though never overtly, as Harriet’s father (Esmond Knight) is a local industrialist, obtaining his wealth and position by exploiting colonialist labor.  But Harriet knows nothing about that, and instead has fallen head over heels in love with the Captain, as has Valerie and Melanie, though each perceives their future with him quite differently.  Harriet is the most obvious, as she reads long expository passages from her diary which unravel in dreamlike sequences, much like a play within a play, where her vision of first love has a spiritual transcendence about it.     

Using Satyajit Ray as an assistant director, the film is slow with long descriptive passages read aloud by the narrator as an adult looking back, which takes some getting used to, as the overall style of this film is otherworldly, where it all plays out like a dream.  There are few films that present positive images from colonialist settings, but this is such an idealized family setting that it could just as easily be Judy Garland’s family in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944).  This personal intimacy adds to the overall appeal of the film, as it allows the poetry of the narrative to register with the audience, along with the supremely lovely shots of the river and of life in India, reflected as a time capsule in dance, ritual, song, and the colorful costumes, adding an exotic element to their ordinary lives. Harriet’s mother (Nora Swinburne) couldn’t be more supportive and loving towards her children, where her nurturing role appears very much like the way mothers were portrayed on American TV in the 1950’s, safe, comfortable, wise, and all-knowing, but certainly playing the supportive role to the husband.  Melanie’s confusion with her identity of being a dark-skinned Indian but educated in the West is never fully explored, as despite her noticeable intelligence, she obviously remains troubled.  Valerie is the most impulsive, while Harriet wins our hearts largely due to her age, as nothing is as it seems at 14, where she’s temperamental, subject to turbulent mood swings, crestfallen at the least little disappointment, where her entire world feels like it’s crumbling apart.  Little does she know that in a short period of time, her mind will be elsewhere, beautifully describing the poetry of the world around her, where as her mother points out, life goes on.  This is a love letter to India where her romanticized visions will once again explode with the personal detail of the seething humanity surrounding her.    

Source Code

SOURCE CODE                     B                     

USA  France  (93 mi)  2011  d:  Duncan Jones 

“The source code is a gift.  Don't squander it by thinking.” 
—Dr. Walter Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright)

An efficiently directed film about disorientation, one that keeps the characters in the film as well as the audience in the dark for as long as possible before small bits and pieces of well placed reality creep in, like clues in the dark.  Directed by Duncan Jones, David Bowie’s son, whose previous sci-fi film MOON (2009) lingered in theaters well beyond the entire summer.  This is something of a mind-bender as well, like an expanded version of a Twilight Zone episode where a character has to re-live the exact same experience that leads up to the precise moment of their death, only for it to happen again and again.  The twist here is that the subject, Jake Gyllenhaall as Captain Colter Stevens, is being programmed by some high risk military experiment where his brain has somehow been implanted into another man’s body, but only for the last 8 minutes of his life, where his mission is to find an explosive device on a fast moving commuter train to downtown Chicago within 8 minutes of detonation when all the passengers die.  What’s especially amusing is that the subject knows no more about this experiment than the audience does, so we learn as he does, and in this case, the Captain is a quick learner, as he’s a well-trained helicopter pilot used to carrying out combat missions in Afghanistan.  The set up always begins as he’s sitting on the train across from an especially attractive woman, Michelle Monaghan as Christine, who engages him in the same conversation.  The intrigue is he is sent on multiple missions, each time his only means of contact afterwards is with the face of Goodwin (Vera Farmiga) projected on a computer screen, who asks him to remember pertinent details, like where is the bomb, who is the bomber, before sending him back in again to figure it all out in another 8 minutes before the train explodes. 

Despite the déjà vu repetition, each sequence is slightly altered based on his knowledge learned in the previous incident, but it’s always the same faces, the same seating arrangement, and the same activity on the train except for his actions and words which are subject to his own instincts.  Stevens easily holds the audience’s rapt attention as he’s a study in intensity and military precision, but his instincts are amazingly human, where he wants to speak to his father on the phone, and he asks about the men on his last combat mission, where his curiosity is exactly what the audience relates to, but Goodwin’s mission instructions continually remind him that his personal inquiries are unnecessary, as he’s wasting time, because this one terrorist act is just the first of several in succession, where the military is pinning their hopes that if they can catch the first guy, the world will be spared the subsequent terror.  This extra pressure of fate only adds to the tension Stevens is facing, as he’s always under the clock, eventually becoming more and more frustrated with the same inevitable outcome.  The other is his interest in Christine, who is positively aglow with an intoxicating charm, where the idea of losing her each time just as he is initially introduced to her is rattling his desperate-minded soul, growing ever more weary at the mounting losses of lives that he can’t seem to be able to save, where everyone at some point comes under suspicion, yet all but one remain cloaked in innocence. 

The interplay between Gyllenhaal and Monaghan seals the deal, as the sincerity of their flirtatious romanticism is reminiscent of the opening moments in Powell and Pressburger’s A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH (1946), where David Niven is a British WWII air force pilot whose plane has been hit, who deliriously utters what he thinks are his last words to an American WAC air traffic controller, Kim Hunter, instantly declaring his love before he leaps without a parachute to certain death.  There are moments of poignancy in this film that seem to come out of nowhere, especially in an explosives film, but Gyllenhaal’s performance generates plenty of hard earned sympathy, as he’s genuinely a man on a mission, apparently stuck alone inside a time traveling capsule of some kind, where his inability to escape his hellish fate feels like Sartre’s No Exit, a punishing world where man’s existence is doomed, like being locked in a room together for eternity with no escape.  But Stevens is certain he holds the key to a way out, even as his superiors on the outside keep reminding him of the limits of his mission, urging him not to reach too far, not to expect too much, that his role is like an apparition, where the source code is like a shadow life that allows scientists to re-enter existence before it dies, where only his ingenuity, if he sticks to the mission at hand, can possibly save future lives.  Of course, in heroic fashion, he can’t expect to save his own, as his fate is sealed, which is why he was chosen for such a delicate mission.  He is only living on borrowed time, never exceeding 8 minutes, like reliving the same dream, always with the same outcome, hoping to spare others from ever having to endure the same experience.  This film is smart, well acted, tautly suspenseful and surprisingly inventive, with a kind of sci-fi twist that keeps the action moving, with a lightness of touch that actually engages the audience.