THE MOVIE:

When we first started hearing about Martin Scorsese's latest film, Hugo, there was cause for concern. It sounded, frankly, like a bit of a sell-out--one of our most intelligent and adult-minded filmmakers doing the cash-grab of a big budget, big studio 3D movie aimed squarely at the family audience. But the film itself cast those concerns decisively aside--not only did Scorsese create the delightfully accessible family 3D movie he'd been hired to make, but he also, simultaneously, created an intensely personal work that shines with its creator's passions and distinctive personality. Neat trick, that.

His story (adapted by Aviator screenwriter John Logan from Brian Selznick's book The Invention of Hugo Cabret) is the Dickensian tale of little Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), left as an orphan in the care of his alcoholic uncle (Ray Winstone), who winds the clocks at the Paris train station. The uncle has been gone for months, so Hugo does his job, dodges the orphan-hunting station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), and tries to scrape together spare mechanical parts for the "automaton" robot that he and his father were repairing before tragedy struck. His notes for that project are confiscated by Georges (Ben Kingsley), the melancholy proprietor of the station's toy stand, who is firm in his refusal to return them. Hugo enlists Georges's god-daughter Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz with a twinkle in her eye) to help.

This straight-ahead story description indicates little of Scorsese's directorial personality; it sounds like a pretty standard kiddie picture, and (in the early trailers, at least) that's what it looked like. But Hugo pulses with its creator's love for the cinema as none of his non-documentary films have. It starts in the style with which that storybook narrative is presented: the long opening stretch is entirely free of dialogue, from the scene-setting at the station to the slapstick pursuit of Hugo by Cohen's inspector (the character is reminiscent of Sellers's Inspector Clouseau, sure, but only inasmuch as that character was influenced by the Keystone Cops and other silent knockabout comics). Later, as Hugo and Isabelle become friends, he makes a horrible discovery--she's never seen a movie. This is a true tragedy, thinks the homeless orphan kid, so he does the only sensible thing: he takes her to the cinema, where they watch Lloyd's Safety Last.

And then the story takes an unexpected (yet entirely logical) turn in which the cinema suddenly becomes the subject, leading to the surprising sight of Mr. Scorsese using his multi-million dollar holiday blockbuster as an opportunity to present a mini-lesson in film history for his (presumably) young audience. "It was another time, children," says Isabelle's godmother, modestly, but she knows that there is something in these old films to charm our children, and so does Scorsese. (At risk of giving away too much, only this filmmaker would make room for an act of film preservation and restoration within his story's happy ending.)

As part of that history, we're shown a reenactment of the famous old story about the first audiences to see the motion picture of a train entering a station--which they leapt away from, afraid that the train was coming for them. Scorsese longs for that level of engagement; he uses his 3D to try and achieve the same effect. They're all tools, the technology and the production design (Dante Ferretti, of course) and the astonishing cinematography (Robert Richardson, no surprise) and the crackerjack editing by his regular collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker. Those are the working parts; he assembles them as smoothly as any filmmaker of that time or ours. The automaton has fallen into disrepair, Hugo's father tells him, but "the secret was always in the clock work." Scorsese uses that "clock work" to bring the robot to life, and the film around him too.

Video & Audio:

The MPEG-4 AVC-encoded, 1080p transfer is, quite simply, scrumptious--the colors pop, the sun-kissed ambers are gorgeous, and the black levels are rich and inky. It's a full, richly dimensional, lovingly cinematic image, exquisitely detailed and often astonishing.

From the opening sounds of clocks ticking throughout the soundstage, the DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 track is equally impressive. With so much of the film set in the big, cavernous train station, the frequent echoes and buzzing of station activity renders the mix particularly immersive, while several sequences--particularly a scary train crash and a nightmare of ticking that zips across the soundstage--show off the brilliance of this demonstration-quality track.

The disc also includes French, Spanish, and Portuguese 5.1 Dolby Digital mixes, an English Audio Description track, and English, English SDH, French, Spanish, and Portuguese subtitles.

Extras:

There is a serious shortage of Martin Scorsese audio commentaries in this world, and it is with great sadness that I report Hugo does not help solve that problem. Instead, we get a quintet of competent featurettes. "Shoot the Moon (The Making of Hugo)" (19:48) is fairly boilerplate EPK-style stuff, but it's an enjoyable featurette--primarily thanks to Scorsese's intelligence, humor, and passion. "The Cinemagician, Georges Méliès" (15:41), shines a bit more light on the picture's eventual subject, with thoughts by Scorsese, book author Brian Selznick, other film historians, and even the master's great-great-granddaughter. It's a tight but informative overview of his career and his innovations, well worth a look.

"The Mechanical Man at the Heart of Hugo" (12:45) focuses on the automaton that provides the engine to the story, running down the history of these early robots. "Big Effects, Small Scale" (5:55) takes a closer look at the visual effects involved in the train crash set piece; "Sacha Baron Cohen: Role of a Lifetime" (3:33) is a joke featurette, rolling with the idea of Cohen as the temperamental genius.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

All of Hugo's material--the movie stuff, the storybook fantasy, the slapstick chases, the heart-tugging discoveries--is presented with a sense of wonder and a wry sense of humor. But there are real stakes here. There is a sequence in which Hugo experiences the kind of disappointment that only a child can feel, and the fact that his protagonist is such a child allows Scorsese to tap into a well of pure emotion in a way that he is rarely able to. Like Wes Anderson in The Fantastic Mr. Fox or Spike Jonze in Where the Wild Things Are, he's not slumming in his "family film"; he's allowing the engagement with a childlike point of view to push him into new territory as a filmmaker. There is something wonderfully genuine about Kingsley's last speech, which may be the most heartfelt and open reflection of this filmmaker's ethos we've yet seen. What a magical movie this is.

Jason lives in New York. He holds an MA in Cultural Reporting and Criticism from NYU.