I thought this was pretty wonderful but there are a few aspects that really stood out for me.
The look was interesting. Gears & steam. Very steampunk. At times there was steam without a source. Lots of neat depth shots with all that machinery. Lots of miniatures and digital embellishments (I don't like CGI for the most part - I prefer stop-motion and older forms of visual effects - but I liked the use of CGI here). The whole look and tone was reminiscent of early Jean-Pierre Jeunet. In terms of content, however - kids & film history - this was a Truffaut film. Even the quirky characters inside the station are very Renoir-Truffaut, like the quirky people that are in the apartment courtyard in
Bed and Board. But the look is really digital Hollywood, ILM, Jeunet. I kind of think that it should've been a 2.35:1 b&w film with color sequences (like
Tetro) and not just as a personal preference but I believe a more classical filmmaking approach would've been more appropriate for the material, but
Hugo is also a blockbuster and it has that contemporary blockbuster look (albeit executed
very well, in my opinion).
Story-wise,
it's clearly about rebirth. The most obvious change of heart is the Stationmaster's. He's out to get kids & changes his mind & becomes a nicer person. But, Melies too has a change of heart, he comes to see Hugo not as a thief but as a salvation. Then there's Hugo's quest, first to repair the robot. Then to find a home other than the orphanage. I guess in between to "fix" the broken Melies.
I felt there were also many symbols in the film and I caught some: the new gear-laden leg brace
is a form of magic em-betterment that goes along with the guy's change in attitude.
I get that war wounds & loss are throughout the film. WW1 is even the presented reason why Melies
hasn't got a job (though it's not the reason in real life that Melies went out of business).
Everyone is missing someone because of the war (or its substitutes).
And finally,
Hugo seems to be a statement about how machines = magic. The magic has touched & changed & altered the characters and made
the robot-like man more human.
I mean if
Hugo is about anything it's about putting the heart back into machine/people
(why the key is shaped like a heart.)
It fits in that movies are a technology that presents dreams & fantasy just as mechanical toys are fun. The cinema too is an invention that is magical. The automaton is man-made life. Steam is a kind of spirit & blood. And the film explicitly talks about society as a machine and each person as a working part in it. There is a link between caring for people & caring for machines. The kid himself
dreams of himself as a machine and also of a machine (a train) crashing.
Also, I just love that this is also a kid's movie about looking at the past & liking books & using a library. Kids need to see all of that today.