I'd Imagine The World Was One Big Machine: Hugo (2011)

Prior to attending the screening of Martin Scorsese's Hugo I was incredibly wary about how much I would enjoy a film that placed heavy emphasis on its 3D elements.  I feared that given its concern with this "new" medium the story and artistic leanings of Scorsese would somehow be lost in the mix.  I was quite foolish to believe such things because not only was Hugo impressive, it was magical and now has me jonesing for another trip to watch a movie in 3D.  I am under no illusions about the passing fad that will become 3D movies, but as long as directors are offering artistically sound and narratively challenging movies, 3D will be enjoyable and respectable in my opinion.  Hugo is by all definitions an already great movie and the addition of the magic of three dimensions only adds to its enjoyability.  It is nice to see a director adhere to the advances of technology while also keeping his own personal styling to the film.  In essence, Hugo is as much an attempt by Scorsese to celebrate the amazing advances of cinema in the past few decades while also reminding viewers of how magical the medium of film has been for the past century.  Between the use of classic silent films and subtle references to classic movies, Hugo is a history lesson in all things cinematic and viewers will be better people for seeing the film.

Hugo follows the follies of a young thief named after the films title played respectably by Asa Butterfield.  Besides being a small time crook, Hugo also maintains the clocks in the train station he calls home.  He is doing so in replace of his uncle who has recently disappeared.  It is later revealed that Hugo resides in the train station because of his father's untimely death in a museum fire and has unwillingly been placed in the care of his drunkard uncle.  The only attachment Hugo has to anything of the past is though a small mechanical robot called an Automatron, which he steals pieces from in order to slowly rebuild the machine.  Unfortunately, given that the pieces are so specific he is only able to steal from the resident toy seller Georges (Ben Kingsley) who eventually catches him in the act and attempts to turn him into the Station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) who finds an unhealthy enjoyment in capturing orphans.  In the process of capturing Hugo, Georges also steals his notebook that contains his fathers notes on the Automatron.  Furious, Hugo follows Georges home to demand his notebook back only to be interrupted by his daughter Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz) who explains that he must win Georges respect in order to gain back his notebook.  However, as Hugo undertakes this task he slowly fixes the Automatron until it is able to write its intended message, a drawing of a spaceship running into a moon.  Hugo is taken back, because the image is one he remembers his father telling him about, which fuels Hugo to discover the films origins.  This task is filled with obstacles, however, because as Hugo discovers Georges's past is far more complicated.  In fact, the film his father spoke of was indeed Voyage To The Moon and was directed by Georges Melies, who is the same Georges for which Hugo worked.  Hugo discovers that due to war and its disparaging affects, Georges retired from filmmaking and lost all access to his films, or so he thought.  With the help of film scholar Rene Tabard (Michael Stuhlbarg) Hugo and Isabelle show Voyage To The Moon to Georges and he is inspired to once again do good by his films.  In the process, Hugo discovers his place in the machine as a fixer of things both emotional and physical.  A rather sentimental closing for Scorsese, but one that is soundly emphasized by silent images of Melies works.

My previous film review discussed the nostalgia present in Midnight In Paris.  I would argue that Hugo serves as a counterpoint in that it focuses on sentimentality as it relates to filmmaking.  Scorsese, often an outspoken champion for film preservation, focuses on the issue of loosing great films to lack of interest or changing technological demands.  This is why the film, although 3D, relies heavily on filmic images considered antiquated by the casual moviegoer.  I, like most viewers, went into this film assuming large explosions and simple plot; however, Scorsese uses his platform wisely and incorporates the most magical moments of early cinema into his film which uses the highest achievements of technology available.  It is pure sentimentality at work, yet it is an earnest film in its sentimentality.  Instead of obnoxiously filling the film with old movie images, Scorsese places them subtly throughout the film, often paralleling them with their original image, whether it be Buster Keaton, The Lumiere Brothers or Georges Melies the image is purposeful and inspired.  It is arguably a new vision of Cinema Paradiso without the sole plot being centered on the cinema.  To Scorsese, the movies are the place where dreams exist and to him this originated with early cinema.  The sentimentality of Hugo is not here to remind us how great of a director Scorsese is, but instead to remind us that cinema has always been profoundly magical and this new advancement in technology owes everything to its century old predecessors.

This movie is stellar.  I cannot recommend it enough and would suggest viewing the film in 3D, particularly if you have yet to see a 3D movie.  It is grandiose and spectacular yet has moments of the gritty cinema verite of old school Scorsese and any cinephile will instantly appreciate the cohesion that exists in Hugo.  Not to mention you get to see silent films in 3D, which is pretty damn amazing.

J. Alfred Prufrock Is Like My Mantra: Midnight In Paris (2011)

Prior to viewing Midnight In Paris I was on the verge of discrediting the contemporary works of Woody Allen.  While he is certainly a comedic master and a fine filmmaker, I was beginning to believe that his films post 2000 were nothing more than increasingly senile diatribes that egregiously missed their mark.  This belief stood fast until I was about twenty or so minutes into Midnight In Paris and realized that Woody Allen was offering up something very intimate and sentimental that was artistically poignant while still adhering to the personal existentialism so key to classic Woody Allen films.  What this film offers is a bittersweet reflection by the aging director on both the beauty and tragedy of nostalgia and how such longing for the past only causes individuals to ignore their own present.  This ignorance towards the present is precisely what Allen's film focuses on, particularly as it relates to a person who finds himself becoming increasingly distant from his fiance and her peers.  Instead of focusing on the woes of aging, Allen creates an all-encompassing study of a often asked question.  That question being "Do I Belong Here?," and as Allen shows, through his film, the answer is rarely ever a simple one.

Midnight in Paris places it primary focus on Gil (Owen Wilson) a successful, but jaded, Hollywood screenwriter who has decided to pursue penning his own novel about a person who owns a nostalgia shop.  Gil is joined by his disapproving fiance Inez (Rachel McAdams) who dismisses Gil's ponderings in favor of wooing over her friends husband Paul (Michael Sheen).  While attempting to find inclusion within his wife's group of friends Gil realizes he is unwanted and takes up a tipsy trip through the streets of Paris.  While stopping to take a breather and recalculate his route home, Gil is approached by a twenties era car whose occupants demand he join them.  Reluctantly, Gil gets into the car to find people matching the cars look in their 1920's wardrobe and speech.  Through passing conversation, Gil realizes that he is in a car with F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston) and his wife Zelda (Alison Pill).  Bewildered Gil begins to verify whether or not he is truly residing in the world of 1920's Paris.  He eventually runs into Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll), Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Salvador Dali (Adrien Brody), Pablo Picasso (Marcial Di Fonzo Bo) and others, even taking a moment to suggest a plot for a film to Luis Bunuel (Adrien de Van), which film buffs will recognize as The Exterminating Angel.  Through all this, Gil meets a woman named Adriana (Marion Cotillard) who he falls for instantly.  However, each morning Gil awakes to his real world in the present day seeking only to return to the Paris of the 1920's, while ignoring his crumbling engagement and the rather blatant infidelity of his wife.  Spurred on by the music of Cole Porter and the discovery of Adriana's journal in the present day, which mentions his exact words from a conversation the two shared the night before, Gil sets out to understand his own attachment to this other world of the past.  On one particular night, Gil follows Adriana on her own trip to France at the turn of the 19th century in which Adriana insists they stay.  It is only now that Gil realizes the flaws of his own nostalgic and illogical attachments to a time gone by and upon explaining his realization to Adriana, Gil returns to his time to end things with his fiance and wander the streets of Paris.  This ability to disconnect from the seemingly inextricable ties of nostalgia allow for Gil to meet a woman on the streets of Paris thus ending the film with the two of them walking the streets of Paris in a poetic and sweet closing shot.

I mentioned the sentimentality of this film in the opening sentences of this review.  I find it rather notable coming from a director like Woody Allen whose staunch pessimism has always found its way into his movies in the past.  Whether it be Annie Hall or Bananas Allen's films remind viewers that reality usually lets us down, and that all does not end well.  However, Midnight In Paris does not do these things, in fact, it does the opposite.  In this film the guy gets the girl, all be it a girl who appears only momentarily throughout the film and is not the one viewers expect.   More importantly, however, the character matures.  In all of the other Allen films I can recall, Allen's characters, often played by the director himself, never advance and often stick to their old ways arguing that putting themselves on the line would only prove hazardous.  In Midnight In Paris this is not the case, Gil absolutely puts himself out in the open for change.  After desperate flailing and a rather harsh taste of reality, Gil accepts his own place in society and advances forward as opposed to staying stagnantly in the present, an absolutely mature approach to narrative from Woody Allen.  Perhaps it is Allen's late age or love for old school movies, but if it were not for the occasional Freud inspired joke I would have had trouble placing this as a Woody Allen film and thought it more of a film Wes Anderson might make twenty years from now.  Regardless, Midnight In Paris is a sobering look at aging and the past and is a promising reminder of how truly prolific of a filmmaker Woody Allen can be, hopefully, we will see many more films of this nature from the director in the years to come.

This is an absolutely gorgeous film and one of the best of the year.  It is still making its way through the smaller theaters and there is no reason that you should not make it a goal of yours to see it before the New Year.  More importantly, remember, when in doubt, it is all a rhinoceros.

You Have To Compare All The Time: My Life as a Dog (1985)

Swedish cinema has an uncanny knack for sentimentality.  Lasse Halstrom's My Life as aDog certainly exemplifies this argument.  In his coming of age tale Halstrom successfully captures the beauty, tragedy, and at times absurdity of growing up.  The film exists as a series of memories and as such, flows quite nostalgically often relying on heavy lighting and slow dialogue to drive home the experience.  Furthermore, like any good memory film it requires certain forms of repetition, which center around specific moments, particularly repeated playings of the song "What A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts" which serves as the focal point for the past for a young boy.

The young boy mentioned is Ingemar (Anton Glanzeilus), who through reflective narrative recalls the times up to and briefly after his mothers death.  It is apparent that his life is quite tragic, in that he has no constant father figure, a sick mother and indifferent relatives.  Fortunately, for Ingemar he has family friends in rural Sweden who agree to take care of the wandering child.  These people belong to a village of eccentric persons, which include a androgynous girl, a boy with green hair and a voluptuous woman who takes a particular liking to the young Ingemar.  It is with this bizarre cast of characters that Ingemar finds a home, because they like him are unconventional in their existence.  The film ends with Ingemar's fond memories of the past using his time spent with these relatives as a high point in his life, especially in relation to the space dog Laika who the Russians left to starve in the great unknown.

The beauty of this film exists in its simplicity.  The film is undeniably intended to be seen through the eyes of Ingemar who is indifferent to female sexuality, assumes his mothers sickness to be fleeting and fails to understand that his father will never return.  As such the film often focuses solely on eye-line shots of Ingemar as he overlooks a young girls nudity as nothing more than helping a friend, or as he reads lingerie adds to an ailing and perverse elderly man.  Even the films humor exists in a realm of childishness, often using acts of absurdism as comedy, whether it be toilet humor or crazy old men swimming in rivers the film is meant for the mind of a child.  Despite this, it exists as a very adult film.  The problems shown represent those emerging in the world of the eighties, particularly single parent households and an increasing gap between the poor and the rich.  Halstrom's ability to expertly navigate between the dueling worlds of youthful innocence and worldly experience is an obvious explanation for the unwavering praise the film received upon released.  It exists in its own realm and remains steadfastly a work of affection remembrance and achingly blissful disenchantment.

The best version of this film is the Criterion release of course, and while I have not made it through the supplements I imagine they are quite good and look forward to the essays which are included.