Hugo: The Past, Present and Future of Cinema, All Collided Into One

Hugo

Directed By: Martin Scorsese

Written By: John Logan, based on the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

Starring: Asa Butterfield, Chloe Grace Mortez, Sacha Baron Cohen, Ben Kingsley, Ray Winstone, Emily Mortimer, Christopher Lee, Helen McCrory, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Jude Law

Director of Photographer: Robert Richardson, Editor: Thelma Schoonmaker, Production Designer: Dante Ferretti, Original Music: Howard Shore

Rated: PG           

            In 1989, film history Tom Gunning wrote a highly influential essay entitled “The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde.” Mr. Gunning examined how film historians had written about the early yore of silent cinema and its push toward narrative cinema. But he proposed that the attraction of the works of Thomas Edison and the Lumiere brothers was not based on seeing stories, but seeing things move. The cinema itself, the spectacle of movement, was its primary attraction. Stories came later; cinema was born out of this attraction of the possibilities of cinema could show or do anything we could think up.

            It is this love of spectacle that has obviously drawn Martin Scorsese to make one of his most ambitious, pictures of his career and one of his most self-conscious films. Hugo, an adaptation of a young adult novel by Brian Selznick looks like a strange departure for a director as it follows a story of a child in somewhat of a fairy tale. But Hugo is much more than that, a bold, genre-crossing picture that is both narrative and spectacle, and ultimately a film essay on the importance of the origins of cinema, and the need to preserve classic film as well.

Trailer for Let Me In Could Be Worth Entering

            Since the project was announced in early 2009, a good amount of derision has come toward the American remake of the Swedish runaway hit Let the Right One In. The film, directed by Tomas Alfredson, was a vampire film with Bergmanesque emotion and simple static cinematography explored loneliness and adolescence in a way few horror films could close to doing. The last thing the film need was an American remake.

            However, with Cloverfield director Matt Reeves leading the project, the trailer for Let Me In looks surprisingly fine. It might look a little too intense and unreserved, but that may just be the action packed teaser trailer that has been released. Some of the shots though, look quite interesting and unique, and the film’s cast is one to boot: Kodi-Smitt McPhee (The Road) and Chloe Mortez (Kick Ass) star, while they are supported by Richard Jenkins and Elias Koteas. The two child actors have proved themselves more than worthy in their recent works, and seem quite appropriate for the roles.

            However, some reservations are probably in order, because one can’t expect too much Bergman and probably very little silence in an American horror film. We’ll see come October.