One starts to wonder if simple machinery will cease to exist. We used to be able to fix and tinker with our own automobiles: today's vehicles are full of electronic and digital components and must be taken in to a garage and be diagnosed with a computer. The lovely mechanical carousel, seen here in the photo and found at Glenbrook Square Mall, has hand-carved animals and old fashioned machinery, but there are fewer of these original wonders.
Movie making, and its final product transferred to film, has morphed its way to current day digital production. In February we saw a couple of salutes to the grand old days of traditional movie making rewarded at the Oscars. I'm thinking of the Best Picture winner The Artist, and the film I am writing about today: Hugo.
This is a story about George Melies, the fantastic French filmmaker who made wondrous, mind-bending classics such as A Trip To The Moon in 1902. In that classic film, a rocket is launched in the sky and lands in the face of the Man in the Moon, causing a burst of cheese to erupt. You probably know what I'm talking about. In Hugo, directed by the iconic Martin Scorsese, Melies is at the end of his career, running a toy shop in the Paris train station. Marty Scorsese is a master of visual imagery, and in one of the first scenes, giant clock gears symbolize the spoke-like mechanisms of the working city itself. The grand train yard with its romantic steam engines and the musicality of the trains themselves become part of the aural background in the story.
It's a beautiful film; there is so much visual poetry with spiral staircases, wind-up toy mice, and a circling of camera movements to lead the viewer. I had been planning to say more about the story itself, but I am more inclined to report on some of the other things that flashed for me watching this movie. Today's children I know would never imagine a life so unpampered as to live behind a clock in a glass clock tower, as one of the key characters does: the boy Hugo. His father brings home an abandoned automoton - a mechanical human - and the two repair it in their spare time. Several times in the film, something happens to move one of the male characters to tears, and I am struck by the thought of how painful a man's tears appear to be. It was a week for tears- I'm thinking of Payton Manning crying at his press conference this week with the announcement he was out of the Colts.
But back to the movie. Again and again, we are struck by the joy, the lost art of mechanical things. Melies, near the end of his life and having lost so much, remembers being a boy and says with so much conviction, "I used to LOVE fixing things." I have always been drawn to people like that. What if no one knew how things worked? Maybe we shouldn't be allowed to own something without this basic knowledge. There sure would be a lot fewer cars around.
The fear of being taken to an orphanage - no child worries about that today. But it was a common theme in old movies. The idea of movies being dreams, or as your dreams being viewed in the middle of the day, or dreams made alive. A movie about the magic of movies. A celebration of artistry, of all kinds of artistry. It's a great thing to celebrate.
I've said I loved the sound in this movie. The pauses, the silences, the noises of every little clock mechanism magnified - lots of suspenseful timing. The sets, props, costumes, and cinematography is great. But I was surprised to see a few problems with acting and editing. Most of the acting was good, but several times I saw a reaction would not be quite natural, a glance would not look spontaneous; I don't know. What's up with that, Scorsese? Sometimes it's in the details. In the shots of Melies' original films, the French dancers even at a distance would raise their lovely arms to reveal obvious armpit hair (I'm not judging here - they are French and this was the early 1900's.) but when they were reproducing these scenes with the contemporary actress portraying his wife, in her lovely close-ups, alas - no hair. And then back to the old shots - dark underarm hair. And then back to the re-done close ups - bare as a baby's bottom. Come on, Scorsese, you are the master. Maybe you are losing your sight, but perhaps your film editor at least needs to be let go.
One of the best actors in the picture was surprisingly: the automoton (mechanical human). It's not alive, but Scorsese figured out how to light it, frame it, add sound to the takes and make his actors react to it. Maybe the automaton should have been nominated for an acting part. I know that's not right, but I was impressed. I did like this movie, and the more I read about Melies, the more fascinated I am. Best of all, it's clean - a family film. I haven't seen The Artist yet, but I'll be making some contrasts when I do. Thumbs and mechanical parts up. With Ben Kingsley as Melies and Sasha Baron Cohen.
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