I saw Martin Scorsese's "Hugo" last night, after work. I'm a big fan of his, love his directing style, so I saw this one with much anticipation, and was disappointed -- not in his shooting of it. It's compellingly shot, of course, as I would expect from Scorsese, who can probably shoot movies in his sleep at this point. But I found the story lacking. Without wanting to go into spoilers per se, the movie is sort of deceptive -- despite the title, the title character really isn't the main driver of anything, so much as he's the catalyst. The movie is really about another character, and the boy is just a means of delivering some kind of creative absolution to that other character. I found the characterizations to be lacking, and the tone to be strongly sentimental and nostalgic, and Scorsese's own intense love of film-making to derail the story, itself. If it wanted to be a movie about movies, it needed to be that -- but there are other things thrown into the mix, and the result is that the movie doesn't convince or persuade -- at least it didn't do that with me (I say that because some folks applauded when it was over). In terms of the shooting of the movie, it was fine -- but in terms of the story, it was wanting.
They likely crafted the story of this cuter, cornflower-eyed waif boy in the train station to sell the real story, which was less marketable -- namely, this old film director who has, for some reason, lost his will to create movies. Again, because of the lack of deep characterization, the whole exercise felt less than convincing.
The movie will likely coast to some kind of Oscar nominations, but it's likely simply because of Scorsese's justified status as one of America's Last Great Moviemakers. It didn't work for me, however -- I didn't feel it exceeded the sum of its parts.
