The Last Movie I Saw

I have to say that watching the film Hugo (Martin Scorsese directed) was surprisingly magical. I knew almost nothing about it before going, and what I knew did not bode well: it's in 3D and somehow I'd gotten it in my head that it was animated. Luckily I was wrong about the animation, and it also turned out to be that rare 3D film that did not give me a headache (though it took about twenty minutes for Scorsese to pull back, after which he let the story dictate how he used the special effect). The story follows the adventures of a young boy who lives in the Paris train station circa 1920, taking care of the numerous clocks there (a job he inherited from an uncle). He's also trying to reconstruct a mechanical man discovered by his late father, scrounging for parts wherever he might find them. In the course of the story, he connects with the granddaughter of a ornery shopkeeper, and the two of them embark on an effort to reconnect the older gentleman with his illustrious (but largely forgotten) legacy. It's no surprise that Scorsese brings so much heart to the story, since he's long on record as a student of film history. The great accomplishment here is that he makes the viewer care as much about the earliest days of cinema as he clearly does, and manages to really earn the sentimental ending by recapturing something of what it must have been like to experience an artform just beginning to flower. I especially like how he used the secondary characters populating the train station to demonstrate the power of mostly silent story-telling, as Hugo watched them from a distance as he went about his rounds. It was a wonderfully subtle way of conveying something of the intersection between those early movies and the world of the audience who they were aimed at. Hugo is both great filmmaking, and spellbinding storytelling.