Hugo is an orphaned child living in Paris in the 1930s. After the death of his father he lives with his alcoholic uncle in a forgotten apartment in the Gare Montparnasse railway station where he learns to maintain the railway station's numerous public clocks. After his uncle's mysterious disappearance, Hugo continues maintaining the clocks. In his spare time, he tries unsuccessfully to repair a silver automaton his father had salvaged from a museum. Hugo becomes involved in the lives of an old toymaker and his granddaughter. They seem to have some connection with the automaton. Can Hugo get their help to complete the repairs before he is caught by the officious Station Inspector and sent to an orphanage?
I wanted to like this movie, I really did; despite the almost universal praise the movie has received in the press, I find I am in the minority.
Hugo is a long and slow movie, and its tale is not well told. We are given no real reasons to care for the main characters initially, and the information that really counts in this respect comes far too late in the movie. The incidental characters are the most sympathetic, but too little time is devoted to them for them to matter. There is a lot of repetition of scenes that neither advance the plot nor develop the main characters. The actors' efforts are competent but not outstanding, and there is little to remember in either the characters or their portrayal.
On the other hand, the sets and the cinematography are excellent, and clockwork is always nice to look at (but even that becomes boring after a while). Technique is vital to any artistic enterprise, but no amount of good technique will rescue an underdone plot or underdone acting and directing. If only Scorsese had got to the heart of his characters right from the start and also had cut 30 minutes from the movie, perhaps then Hugo would have truly merited its nomination for the Best Picture Academy Award.
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