Hugo: Magical Realism a lá Scorsese

One of those fascinating movies produced in 2011 was this movie directed by none other than Martin Scorsese. Hugo is a movie set in the Paris of the mid-twentieth century, or at least an idealized version of the Paris of that time. Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield is an orphan who hides and lives in Montparnasse train station. As he is twelve he manages to steal to survive and takes parts from a toymaker (Ben Kingsley) in order to continue his hobby which is to put together an automaton that belonged to his father and make it work. He is about to conclude his work but needs a special heart-shaped key to make it function. Looking for a way to activate the automaton he is caught by the toymaker who takes a notebook that was Hugo´s father´s, full of notes on how to repair things. Willing to recover the notebook at any cost, Hugo befriends the toymaker's goddaughter,Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz) who agrees to help him recover the notebook, but that becomes unnecessary when Hugo discovers that Isabelle's necklace has a pendant and that pendant is the heart-shaped key he was looking for. Together they use it and the automaton activates to draw the scene of an old movie and then signs to stop later. Isabelle is surprised to recognize her godfather's signature. In order to investigate more they go to the library and discover that the toymaker is actually George Méliés a famous filmmaker of the beginning of the century who was later on forgotten when World War I happened. Georges had married one of the actresses of his films and in order to survive had become a toymaker. In the library the two kids meet the author of the book where they found all that information who tells them he is a great fan of Méliés and would love to meet him since he thought Méliés to be long dead. Eventually Hugo returns the automaton and a special event is organized to commend Méliés and his works thart apparently were not entirely lost as he thought. In recognition Méliés adopts Hugo who has again a family to call his own.

But again there is a lot more about this movie that you have to see yourself. There are more characters  interacting with Hugo, people that spend so much time in the station that it is like a big neighborhood where everyone knows everyone else. The acting in general is quite consistent and especially the kids do a great job. The scenes where they are in a point where all of Paris can be seen is so poetic and vibrant, visually speking that you will find yourself repeating it once and again because that is the greatest strength of this film besides the actors, the great direction, and the ingenous story: the visuals. This was a movie thought to be seen in 3D, but even in 2D it looks really magnificent.  It is also a movie full of nostalgia that looks back to the early times of filmmography when pictures were shot because it was a beautiful and self-fulfilling action, and not to get money out of it.

Five stars out of five for this one.