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At long last! The film review I’ve been promising for over a week now–imagine that!

But, before I get to that, I’d just like to reiterate what I said at the beginning of my last post, and mention that despite my use of several images in the post to follow, the reality under SOPA/PIPA would be a blog post that is very visually boring, even though the information content (i.e. the text that I produce myself) would be substantially the same. That’s not really an internet that I’d prefer to live in, though, so…just remember that as you read this entry.

I recently saw the film Hugo, which has a very beautiful and worthwhile official website. It is based on the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (which also has its own website!). Hugo is the first 3-D film I’ve seen since the 1980s in the cinema (or anywhere, really)–I can’t remember the name of that film I saw in the ’80s, but it was a B/Sci-Fi film, and I remember some scenes in it fairly well. The 3-D experience was rather essential to Hugo, since Martin Scorsese filmed it specifically in that cinematic medium, and thus it was only released in cinemas that could support that technology; as a result, it didn’t come to my local cinema in my town, and I had to go two towns over to see it, which didn’t happen until the weekend before last. I’m certainly impressed with the 3-D technology and the tasteful usage to which it was put in the present film; but, I must also confess that it did slightly disorient me and gave me some vertigo difficulties briefly; even non-3-D films have done that to me in the cinema in recent years (and for much of my life!); however, it eventually passed as I got accustomed to the effect, and I’m pleased that it did so.

Very interestingly, the 3-D glasses we were all issued to view the film properly were like regular glasses, with black thick-rimmed frames, which quite literally made us view the film in the same way that its director/creator, Martin Scorsese, would have done!

See what I mean? On this past Sunday, Scorsese won his third Golden Globe for Best Director for his work on Hugo, and quite deservedly so!

The film Hugo is about several things simultaneously. It is ostensibly the story of adventure and discovery for two young people, whose lives have both been beset by the tragic loss of parents, in unraveling a mystery that strangely intertwines their lives and their legacies from their parents or guardians. However, it is also an unrepentant (and quite a beautiful and effective) homage to one of the earliest pioneers of cinematic special effects (including double exposures!), Georges Méliès, who started his career as a stage magician before moving into cinematic production. Sadly, the story of Méliès is almost entirely true, as he was defrauded of much credit for his work by the likes of Thomas Edison, and he nearly died in obscurity. However, he was eventually recognized for his contributions by the French government and was awarded and recognized for them before his death in 1938. A fuller biography of him is available here, and as you’ll see, Ben Kingsley’s portrayal of him is nearly spot-on visually! The entire film ends up being a kind of homage to film generally speaking; the scene shown on the movie poster above, for example, featuring the protagonist of the film, Hugo Cabret, in a situation not unlike Buster Keaton’s famous “hanging from the clock” scene.

But why, you may ask, am I reviewing this film in this blog? If you’ve not seen the film, you’ll never guess; and if you don’t know this blog very well but have seen the film, you’ll also never guess…So, I suppose I’d better just come clean with it.

Part of the reason I’m writing about it is because the juvenile star of the film, Asa Butterfield, is not only an excellent actor (and the part he played was written realistically), but he’d also be really excellent to play the role of Polydeukion, which I’ve discussed here before as well. Just notice the similarities in their hair!

And, many things in the film suggested the wider context of Polydeukion’s time period, including several things relevant to the overall interests of this blog and to some particular lines of interpretation I’ve adopted within it.

Georges Méliès was a stage magician turned cinema director/producer, and the obvious indebtedness to “illusion” in both career paths was made apparent throughout the film. A key aspect of the film that brings Hugo and Méliès together eventually is an automaton that the latter designed, but that the former had been working on restoring with his father before his father’s death. And, one of the films that Méliès is most famous for is Trip to the Moon…

Given all of these matters together, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Lukian of Samosata and many of his writings. Lukian railed against Alexander of Abunoteichos for using many parlor tricks against the unsuspecting and hoodwinked cultores for Glykon; and, when he wrote about Pancrates in Philopseudes, one of the most famous and influential incidents of automata was involved in the incident described. But, in some of Lukian’s other beloved writings–which, perhaps, I have not discussed as frequently in this blog previously–is in True History (which is a favorite of Alan Moore as well, who has written about it or mentioned it in many locations), when he describes his journey to the moon.

See the connections now?

And yet, the film Hugo is entirely different from a great deal of Lukian’s satirical writings, in that it does not seek to denigrate religion or magic, or to make those who fall under the spell of particular illusions out to be dupes and “thickos” (as they’d say in Ireland), but instead to celebrate the active engagement in such illusions that is the essence of cinema. Rather than thinking of magic as “change in conformity with Will,” as Sanctus Aleister Crowley would have it (and as too many people who are frustrated with or “don’t believe” in it seem to think), magic is here being understood in a more Alan Moore-like fashion, as a methodology and employment of “informational science,” one might say. It is a conscious and deliberate entry into a dream landscape in which almost anything is possible; and what isn’t possible by science, stagecraft, and special effects is made more possible by the active engagement of the viewer’s imaginative capacities. If magic is never understood as anything greater nor lesser than that, I’d argue that one is doing quite well indeed.

Even if you’re not remotely interested in Lukian of Samosata and Polydeukion (which many of you aren’t, I’m sure!), I’d highly recommend seeing Hugo, simply as a very human story (and one that is fair to all characters in the film) as well as a visual feast and a joyous celebration of cinematic artistry as well as history by one of the modern masters of the medium.

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