[Warning: if you consider it spoiling a movie to discover the underlying theme of the movie prior to watching it, don't read this post until you've seen Hugo. The movie revealed its theme to me only in the last few minutes. I really enjoy that revelatory experience and consider it essential for my movie-going enjoyment. If you agree with me on that and haven't seen the movie yet, don't read on. just trust me when I say you won't be disappointed by Hugo.]
"I'd imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured, if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn't be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason."
An orphan, a has-been, and a cripple. Three broken people who, more than anything else in life, just want to work correctly. These are the central characters of
Hugo, an amazing movie about one's purpose in life and about finding that
purpose in the most unlikely places and in the most unlikely ways. All other characters (and robots), regardless of their screen time, are present merely to bring these 3 central characters into the right place at the right time in order to reveal that through the midst of great human brokenness, everyone was created with a purpose.
Visually I loved the film. It had a whimsical quality to it that made you understand, before ever experiencing them, that throughout the film you were going to be exposed to some fantastic, imaginative, unrealistic things. This was not a study in realism and we have visual cues of that from the beginning. So when fanciful things happen the audience isn't tempted to say, "that could never happen" but rather the fantastic events just naturally flow out of the visual style of the film. It's all the beauty of Scorsese's Gangs of New York without all the bother of horror and violence you'd expect in a movie about a sociopath. No sociopaths to be found here, just broken people glumly pursuing what they all believe is their lot in life, with no idea how much joy awaits them by the end of the film.
Visually I loved the film. It had a whimsical quality to it that made you understand, before ever experiencing them, that throughout the film you were going to be exposed to some fantastic, imaginative, unrealistic things. This was not a study in realism and we have visual cues of that from the beginning. So when fanciful things happen the audience isn't tempted to say, "that could never happen" but rather the fantastic events just naturally flow out of the visual style of the film. It's all the beauty of Scorsese's Gangs of New York without all the bother of horror and violence you'd expect in a movie about a sociopath. No sociopaths to be found here, just broken people glumly pursuing what they all believe is their lot in life, with no idea how much joy awaits them by the end of the film.
While the movie
was great fun to watch, the more I recall the various themes in Hugo,
the more enjoyment I continue to receive from the film after-the-fact. Hugo
is a movie about a fixing things. Things that are broken. The amazing
realization we discover along with the whimsical protagonist, Hugo, is
that the things that he needed to fix weren't clocks and they weren't
even the amazing mechanical robot that was so precious to him. In fact at the
end of the film the robot is as valuable as the scrap metal from which is was built. It's merely an object whose purpose was to fix the lives of broken people. Ironically Hugo, one of those broken people, thought his purpose was to fix the broken robot.
The
things Hugo fixed were the people's lives who he came across. Just as he eventually fixes the station inspector's broken leg brace, he also manages to fix the inspector's broken life as well (or perhaps more appropriately, his broken heart). Hugo also manages to fix the broken life of the once-was has-been Georges Melies. Somehow the mysterious robot in an equally mysterious way brings Hugo into Melies' life in order to fix Melies life and in the process, Hugo's life as well. So how did the robot seem to be in all the right places at the right times? Serendipity? Contrived movie plot device? Fate? Providence? Coincidence? If you asked Hugo he'd likely respond that the robot was just one part of a big machine that's as big as the entire earth. And like all good machines ever created, it was just fulfilling the purpose for which it was built. It created the most unlikely friendship (Hugo and Georges), fixing both of their lives in the process.
At an emotional climax at the end of the film Georges has to remind Hugo that the robot worked perfectly. I feel the exact same way about the film itself.
