La critique de James Berardinelli (2)
                                                             
Scorsese's vision of Paris is the stuff of dreams. With a few exceptions, we see it only through Hugo's eyes as he gazes out the windows of a clock tower. It is the City of Lights as romantics around the world imagined it to be between the wars. Hugo's more immediate environs - the station - seem like a modernized excerpt from Dickens, complete with references to orphans and orphanages. Hugo's presence inside clocks and on catwalks allows him to observe the lives of others in the station without being forced to dwell on his own lonely circumstances. In many ways, Isabelle is Hugo's salvation - his first true friend and a girl who yearns for the kind of adventure in real life that she reads about in books borrowed from the kindly M. Labisse (Christopher Lee).

Scorsese pays homage on several occasions to one of the earliest films, the Lumieres' Arrival of a Train at the Station. Indeed, with Melies - one of the pioneers of early film technique and special effects - as a main character, Hugo reveals much about film during the silent era. We learn that, between 1896 and 1914, Melies directed more than 530 films but, in order to save himself from bankruptcy, he was forced to sell the film stock so it could be melted down and turned into shoe heels. Only one print of one of his productions, 1902's A Trip to the Moon, exists and he views his life as a failure. By telling Melies' story, Scorsese has not only an opportunity to explore the innovations and inventiveness of filmmaking during its primitive, formative era, but also a opening to incorporate a message about the importance of preserving films for posterity. (A dogged effort unearthed copies of about 80 of Melies' titles, but more than 400 are forever lost.)

Performances by Sir Ben Kingsley and young Asa Butterfield (who previously had the title role in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas) give Hugo depth and feeling. Kingsley is in top form as an aging Melies who has been beaten down by life and cannot cope with how far he has fallen from his glory days. Flashbacks of Melies directing some of his best-known films provide context, although the de-aging process (whether makeup, CGI, or a combination) does Kingsley no favors - he looks like he's wearing a bad latex mask. Butterfield brings Hugo to life as an intelligent, inquisitive boy who is desperate for a sense of friendship and belonging. The supporting cast includes Sacha Baron Cohen in a mostly straight role as Hugo's nemesis; Emily Mortimer and Richard Griffiths as station merchants whose lives Hugo observes; Helen McCrory as Mama Jeanne, Melies' wife; Ray Winstone as Hugo's boozing uncle; Jude Law as Hugo's kindly father; and Christopher Lee, in a rare nonthreatening part, as a bookseller.