Ideas for Discussion: Hugo  

1. The film, even in 2-D, has a dazzling opening, described briefly by Chicago Sun Times critic Roger Ebert: "The opening shot swoops above the vast cityscape of Paris and ends with Hugo peering out of an opening in a clock face far above the station floor." Nearly every critic writing about the film mentioned that opening with varying stages of awe and admiration. I was struck not only by the shot, but by the fact that the sound of the train precedes all images in the film and that the clockworks fade out in a match cut to the Paris skyline. What was your response to this pyrotecnic opening?
2. Tracking shots, in fact, abound in the film. Scorsese is known for his use of fluid camera movements tracking his characters in shots usually set to music. How crucial is this kind of movement to the mood and style of the film?
3. The shot from behind the number 4 inside the clock establishes Hugo as someone who moves in the station's interior workings and watches the people who work in the station interact with each other. How might this kind of character introduction work better in this context than the more usual presentation of characters with a thumbnail sketch of who they are? How might it make the work of the film's audience more difficult? Is this good?
4. Early in the action, we meet the station inspector, who provides not only a villain, but also some comic moments. As Hugo flees his dog, watch the tracking shots as he runs by actors portraying such 1930s Paris residents as Django Reinhardt, James Joyce and Pablo Picasso. Given that most viewers will miss these cameos, why might Scorsese include them anyway?
5. I promise to stop describing memorable tracking shots, but first, I'd like you to consider the one where Hugo is attempting to get his notebook back. From his perspective (low angle), we follow the toyshop owner home, with particularly moody shots of the statues in the cemetary across from the Melies apartment. If a filmmaker uses the same kind of shots repeatedly, we have to ask ourselves if there is a particular reason to do this in a particular film? In Hugo, is there?
6. The automaton adds an interesting dimension. Apparently, Scorsese had them heavily researched and then had his designers create a huge array of possible faces. The one they chose, he believes, has the same expression as the Mona Lisa. How does the cinematography bring the machine to apparent life as Hugo continues to work on him and even talk to him after his father's death?
7. "Magicians used this kind of machine when I was a boy," Hugo's father tells him in a flashback. How does this comment point us toward the actual creator of this automaton?
8. At the same time Hugo's story is playing out, we have two "doggy dramas" in progress. They were not in the book from which this film was adapted; why might they have been added?
9. The Station Inspector is a character greatly expanded in the adaptation process. How effective is he as a character? Some critics found him quite annoying and not very funny; others liked the addition. Where do you stand on this?
10. Note the shot of Hugo when Melies gives him the ashes of his notebook: why is the notebook in focus while Hugo is not?
11. Midway through the film, Hugo takes Isabelle to the movies and we see a very funny scene from a Harold Lloyd film, Safety Last, where Lloyd's character is suspended far above the ground, clinging to the hour hand of a clock. Where will we see this kind of shot again in Hugo?
12. "I love the movies; my father always took me for my birthday," Hugo tells Isabelle, who's never seen a film before. After they're thrown out of the showing of Safety Last, she says to Hugo, "Thank you for the movie today; it was a gift." In what way is this signalling a major theme of the movie we're watching?
13. Why is the automaton so important to Hugo? Why was it so important to Georges Melies before him? Be ready to talk about the editing in the scene where the automaton finally comes to life.
14. How do Isabelle and Hugo solve the mystery of how the automaton came to sign Isabelle's Papa Georges' name? Hugo, who likes to fix things, tells Isabelle that Georges is "a broken windup toy."
15. There's a lot of information on the real Georges Melies online and at your local library. To start, you can find a brief biography, and endless filmography, and some of his short films to watch online at IMDB. Click here to go there and explore.
16. Hugo and Isabelle do their research on Melies at the film academy library in Paris, where they find a book called The Invention of Dreams. As they read, the book magically comes alive with an amazing montage of famous early film moments, starting with the Lumiere brothers, and ending with Melies. See how many of the clips you can identify.
17. The book's title becomes more clear as its author, Professor Tabard, recalls his visit as a boy to the glass palace in which Melies staged his magical films. He meets Melies, who says, "If you've ever wondered where your dreams come from, you look around. This is where they're made." Still true?
18. Afterwards, Isabelle and Hugo have a conversation about why all things need a purpose: "If you lose your purpose, it's like you're broken." That night, Hugo has a dream about finding the key to the automaton, but being run over by a train while he's retreiving it. At that point he wakes up to find he's turned into a clockwork boy." Why have the dream at this point?
19. Predictably, Hugo and Isabelle take Tabard to visit Melies, ostensibly to show him the print of Melies' Voyage to the Moon, but Hugo and Isabelle have more of a shock treatment in mind. How does it work?
20. The scene where Tabard shows the film for Mama Jeanne, Isabelle, and Hugo--and us--is beautifully done. What make it so effectively emotional?
21. When Melies appears, he narrates the history of how he began as a magician, got into film by building his own camera and projector, became a huge success, and then, as times changed, became the totally unknown man he is by the time Hugo meets him. It's all about, we're told, entering "the world of imagination." What finally becomes of Melies' films?
22. The ending chase through the train station is either fabulous or a fall off from the intense scene that preceded it. What's your response to it?
23. We should note that the movies are not only fun and an exercise in imagination, but they can teach you survival techniques. What did Hugo learn from watching Safety Last?
24. I wonder why we end with Isabelle writing the book about Hugo Cabret and his search for meaning; any theories?
25. In the final film showing, Melies says Hugo "saw a broken machine and he fixed it." Given that Martin Scorsese is a director/producer with power over pretty much every aspect of this production, we might expect to find it echoing his ideas and concerns. Judging from the film you just saw, what was his purpose in making it?
26. Though the character Georges Melies invites all of us to "Come and dream with me," the move does not rely wholly on magic for its effect. Scorsese chose to use a minimum of CGI, preferring to work with minatures and to build entire sets, such as the train station, which could also have been generated digitally. As Andrew O'Hehir points out in Salon.com, "Most of the film was shot with live actors in physical space, on a full-scale set built at Shepperton Studios outside London. That adds a level of realism to the fairytale that's absolutely crucial." That's O'Hehir's explanation, but why do you think he might have made that decision?
27. The film is an adaption of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick; that book is in equal parts a story in words and a graphic novel illustrating the narrative. If you get a chance to read the book, one surprising thing is the level on which Scorsese used the illustrations for a blueprint for his cinematographer and set designer. As a director, Scorsese is perfectly capable of visualizing his own scenes; why might he make the decision to follow Selznick's?
28. In a review in The New York Times, Manohla Dargis sees Scorsese as locating "plenty of cinematic poetry here, particularly in the clock imagery, which comes to represent moviemaking itself. The secret is in the clockwork, Hugo's father says to him in flashback, sounding like an auteurist. Time counts in Hugo, yes, but what matters more is that clocks are wound and oiled so tht their numerous parts work together as one. The movie itself is a well-lubricated machine, a trick entertainment and a wind-up toy, and it springs to life instantly in a series of opening aerial shots that plunge you into the choreographed bustle of the train station."
29. Andrew O'Hehir seems to be seeing the film in the same context as Dargis: "I have seen the future of 3-D filmmaking and it belongs to Martin Scorsese, unlikely as that may sound. Scorsese's use of 3-D in Hugo is both physical and psychological, going inside the outsized clockwork above the train station where Hugo makes his home and also inside the machinery of dreams, the prehistory of the craft and art to which this great American director has devoted his life."

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