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davidahallnum5
May 1312 min read

Hugo 3D Blu-ray Review

MOVIE REVIEW

Hugo is a 2011 family film by Martian Scorsese about an orphan with the same name. He lives in a French train station where he winds the clocks without anyone's knowledge, stealing food to survive and avoiding the guards. Why does he choose to live in a train station rather than join an orphanage where he can be easily fed and cared for? Well, it's because this is the only way he can put together a broken automaton that he and his father found and tried fixing right before the latter died a sudden death. During his time in the train station, he ends up stumbling upon a young girl named Isabelle, whose godfather works in the same train station. Together, they work to try and fix the automaton and see whatever secrets it might be holding from them, and it might just unlock something about Hugo's place in this confusing world.

A family film with stylized visual effects built for 3D? This probably seems like the last movie the master of filmmaking Martin Scorsese would set out to create. Yet somehow, he not only does it well, but also in a somewhat personal way I feel no one could make but him. This story is one about a young boy trying to find his purpose, sure. But in a strangely fitting way, it also becomes a movie about the creation of movies, and even gives a history lesson on real life filmmaker George Méliès. I initially thought this was Martin Scorsese adding his own little touch to the book "The Invention of Hugo Cabret." But it turns out this plot line does actually come courtesy of the film's source material. And funny enough, that only makes it even more into a story that Martin, the legendary film director, was destined to make.

I bet very few of you know this. But Scorsese is also enthusiast not just in his own art, but also old cinema. And I quite understand. Cinema is an art form that has come a very long way, and anyone with a passion for it deserves to see the steps it took into becoming the kind of whimsical storytelling device it is today. Martin has created an organization called The Film Foundation dedicated to the preservation of old silent movies. And according to its website, unfortunately, "half of all American films made before 1950 and over 90% of films made before 1929 are lost forever." Over the past couple years or so, this quote really stuck with me. And over time, I've discovered the titles of plenty of lost movies and have only garnered more and more interest in seeing them.

What does any of this have to do with Hugo, you might ask. Well, once again, Hugo's also blends in the story of the legendary silent movie director George Méliès, who has created over 500 films in his lifetime. And in doing so, it shares his life from his fascination with the medium of movies, his success with them, and how wartime came and his works became melted down into shoe heels because "the world had no time for magic tricks and movie shows." As of now, we have recovered over 80 of his films. But it goes to show that the world can sometimes be cruel to old silent movies, making the work of dozens of people, especially the visionary director in charge, all for naught. Depressing thought, for sure. However, for anyone who cares about the medium of film, it should spike a sense of duty to preserve and showcase for everyone this form of art and human expression that, for some people, is their main passion and drive in life. Without that duty, where do those extraordinary filmmakers really fit into the grand scheme of life? It's a profound statement and honestly, who is better to convey it than the founder of the Film Foundation itself, Martin Scorsese? This might be a crucial plot point in the original story of Hugo Cabret. But when brought to us by Martin himself, it feels a lot like his passion project.

Divorcing it from the movie aspect, though, the storyline about Hugo is also well-handled and sincerely told in its own right. And once again, it blends into the story's overall theme about purpose. But for Hugo, it comes through the analogy of the clocks and machines he works with. The young lad has certainly been though a lot, from the death of his parents to the constant running from the grasp of the police so he doesn't get sent away. But through it all, he still sees the world as a whole as one big machine, with every little aspect playing into something bigger than himself, and that nothing in life is without meaning. The trouble with Hugo is that he's still trying to figure out what kind of meaning his own life holds. I try to keep my faith out of my reviews. But I found this message to be quite resonant with me as I know that through Christ, we all have purpose and play a part in a much greater plan (Jeremiah 29:11, Roman 8:28, Jeremiah 1:5). And this is something that I believe that even the secular world tries to latch onto. None of us want to feel wasted or discarded. We all want to find our place in a world that seems lost and convoluted. Of course, in the movies people always discover who they are and what they're meant to be. But it's in films life Hugo that acknowledge our confusion with the world around us that speak to us the greatest. If George's storyline seems to speak to filmmakers about their purpose, than Hugo's speaks to the rest of us. The result of that is a film that not only sticks with you long after you see it, but also offer a comforting reminder that while it seems everything around us has gone mad, we are still special. We all still have our place in this world, and life for others, in some way or another, won't be the same without us.

From a technical filmmaking standpoint, Hugo is undoubtedly solid. But then again, what else would you expect from Martin Scorsese? The visual style and the 3D are absolutely splendid, but we'll have more than enough time to talk about that later in the 3D review. The characters are very charming, the story is well paced, it some moments that are quite riveting, the score is great, and it has an overall excellent atmosphere, the likes of something from Paddington or Harry Potter. It's such a shame this film did not do that well at the box office, mainly as it was up against The Muppets and Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 1. But also I guess in general, most families just want something fast paced and colorful to keep their kids entertained, whereas something like Hugo is slow paced and thoughtful. And sadly, that seems to have set a precedent in our modern culture for children's entertainment that reigns true today and have put films like Hugo almost entirely out of fashion. But movies like these still need to exist, not just for great family entertainment's sake, but also for art's sake. And who would've thought that the man behind Goodfellas and Taxi Driver would've been the one to prove that to us?


OVERALL FILM RATING: 4/5


3D REVIEW

Weirdly, it seems like the only people who talk about Hugo aren't actually those interested in family films, but rather 3D films. That statement may be related to how little of an appeal this film seems to have on general audiences, but I think it says even more about how well the film works from the 3D side of things. A lot like Gravity and Avatar, this is a movie where the 3D gets talked about almost as much as the film itself. And it's not just because the 3D is that great, but because it's crucial to the story. Hugo is a movie about making movies. So should it be surprising that in 2011, when 3D was all the rage, that the Martin Scorsese, the man all about movies, would take his own film to the next level by making it in 3D? Here, the extra dimension is not here just for its own its own sake or because it enhances the visuals, but because it represents the next step in modern filmmaking. It uses the technology of the future to discuss the technology of the past.

There is one area of the movie that makes use of this perfectly. At one point, it's explained that one of the first films ever made was simply of a train coming into the station. It was short and nothing too special. But when it was first shown, audiences had never seen anything like it, and they would duck for cover as they thought the train was coming right for them. It all seems very silly to us now. But Scorsese redoes that in a scene later on in the film when a train runs off the rails and right into the station, causing havoc and mayhem. And in 3D, where you can see everything right in front of you, it's made genuinely tense. I can only imagine all the small children in the theater ducking for cover at the part of the film. Martin Scorsese didn't just set out to make a family picture in 3D, he crafts a loving tribute to film, and he uses the 3D in the process of doing that.

But of course, here at the 3D Dinosaur, we're expected to get into the technical details of how the 3D used. Just like with The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet and Kung Fu Panda, I'm not sure if I can fully cover every way this film works in 3D. I'll do my best. But in all honesty, the best way to know why Hugo is a 3D masterpiece is simply just to watch it. Typically, I start out with things that look great in-screen. But with Hugo, I think it'd be better if I started out with all that protrudes the screen. Nary a scene goes by without several things sitting out in the theater (or the living room). Sometimes, this is done in a pretty fun way, and other times it's quite subtle. But all it's done in a way that mirrors that of Meet the Robinsons and Born to be Wild where the goal is bring you into the world of the characters.

As for those fun ways, Hugo does have itself some interesting moments. There's some flying drawings, fire, the aforementioned train, a dog, the automaton, and in a crucial story moment, a moon in a film within a film that comes out of a movie screen and into the audience. One of my personal favorite pop outs involves Borat impersonating a guard who appears multiple times throughout the movie. He's always sticking his head out in a menacing manner, but there's one shot in particular that dares to ramp up the pop-out depth as far as it will go. Besides that, though, most of the pop outs are very subtle, but still highly effective. You have the placement of the characters, you have steam, the famous automaton, snow, some burnt pieces of paper, fireworks, smoke, a giant prop dragon, clock handles, a pendulum, and more. It all sounds like pretty basic stuff. But when you see it in action, you know every frame of this film was shot in 3D. One standout moment that stuck out to me was SPOILER ALERT actually near the end when George Mélièz is standing on stage speaking. The camera does a special zoom where the background goes further and further back, but George keeps going further and further forward. It's a pretty poignant moment in the story, and the 3D does a great job of bringing you closer into it. END SPOILERS

In screen, the depth is just as mesmerizing, and is often incredibly deep. One of the film's first shots is a tracking shot starting from the outside of the train station before moving in between two trains and encountering plenty of people. The camera then goes into a crowd before moving up into a clock with a hole in the number "4" in which we see Hugo's face. Once again, things like this can be described. But for it it to be impactful, it must be seen. Throughout the film, we're treated to some wonderful 3D composition that feels almost inspired. We can see the enormous train station in all of its glory, travel with Hugo down some narrow tunnels, look into clocks and machinery with all their little details, and even scale a huge clock tower (with some good top-down shots to make it all the more dizzying) and look out onto Paris. There's one scene that makes for a gripping viewing when Hugo has to climb on the outside of the clock tower to avoid being seen by Borat. This scene echoes an earlier scene in which Hugo and Isabelle were sitting in a movie theater watching a movie where a man was in the exact same situation. Speaking of that scene, the movie theater contains rows of seats and a projector creating beams of light that are well-choreographed for 3D.

Elsewhere, the cityscapes are always super deep, the scene with the train going off the rails has a couple neat shots where the camera is placed directly onto the rail and is viewing it diagonally, there's a library that's captured stunningly in 3D, along with a shot caught from behind a bookshelf, a flip-book of an automaton that becomes progressively more 3D as the pages turn, a movie studio with glass windows and lavish silent film sets (with the third dimension allowing you to see things the way old silent film directors probably never thought was possible), and even some of the WWII footage has been converted to 3D (making me once again wish we'd see a 3D Blu-ray release of They Shall Not Grow Old). Probably one of the most interesting uses of 3D in the film would be at the end when SPOILER WARNING a crowd of people is finally getting to watch George's long lost films, and from the audience's (our) perspective, it's in 3D. This is the rare of case of getting something extra from the 3D version the 2D version just cannot offer. END SPOILERS

Part of what makes Hugo so effective in its 3D experience is that from the start, this film was simply envisioned in 3D, so it always manages to make use of what's at its disposal. And the thing is, not only is the 3D not a distraction from the story, it actually further enhances it. Whereas the aforementioned T.S. Spivet was great in 3D and to a degree, probably had more fun with it, Hugo's 3D is treated with a bit more subtlety. It does give us a fair amount of pop outs and all that good jazz. But overall, it seeks to do to a larger degree something that films have been so effective at for over a century: bringing us closer to the characters and helping us to understand what they're going through. In that regard, Hugo's 3D is crafted almost brilliantly. Does the movie work well enough in 2D? Sure. But once again, this is a movie about how far cinema has come since its earliest years and what it's capable of doing. Because of that, you really ought to watch the film the way it was intended. While Hugo might be visually impressive enough on its own merit, it's truly an experience in 3D, not just for your eyes, but also your mind and your heart.


3D RATING: EXCELLENT


OTHER SOURCES THAT REVIEW THIS MOVIE'S 3D






FINAL THOUGHTS


Hugo is a one-of-a-kind film that works amazingly in many different ways. It's a great family picture, a great fictional period piece, a great 3D film, a loving tribute to filmmaking especially in the olden days, and a lush visual spectacle. And it's all brought to us by Martin Scorsese, the man we would probably least expect to create this film, and also the man who most deserves to. All around, Hugo is simply a fantastic movie and one that I highly recommend to everyone of all ages from all background with all different tastes in movies. Chances are you'll find something here to appreciate. And if movies are your thing, this is a must-see. By now, you should now that if you are to see Hugo, see it in 3D if possible. And you especially know why. This film raises 3D from a "magic trick" to an art form. In fact, I'd say it stands alongside Avatar with how far it pushes the technology not just as something to make the experience better, but also as a storytelling device. I wish more films dared to do what Hugo did in the modern day and help people to see 3D as more than just a cheap gimmick, and a ticket price inflator. It truly goes to show that done right, 3D can become integral to the film. I doubt there's much incentive to do so now, just as there's little incentive to make a children's film that runs at two hours and moves slowly and thoughtfully. But that only further goes to show how much of an anomaly Hugo is, and what a beautiful, artistic one it is at that. If you get the chance, do yourself a favor and check Hugo out. As of now, there's a combo pack released by the Criterion Collection that had both the 4K and 3D copies of the movie. I haven't seen the 4K version, but I bet it would look nice. But still, it'd be missing the 3D, the final piece of the puzzle, the final gear in the machine, the heart shaped key to the keyhole. Once again, the 2D version does look good enough as it is. But if you can, pick up the 3D version, do so. It will truly be an unforgettable experience.


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OR GET THE COMBO PACK FROM THE CRITERION COLLECTION


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