Hugo   RG-2012 

150 years after his birth, the spirit of film magician Georges Méliès still lives on. At once an adaptation of a children’s book and a celebration of the cinema in its pioneering days, Scorsese’s first excursion of in the realm of 3D is a stylistic triumph.

With his 12-year-old daughter in mind, Scorsese translates Brian Selznick’s children’s book into an initiation into the art of cinema. He does this both in a literal and a metaphorical sense: with an evocation of the both glorious and tragic career of Georges Méliès as well as a playful conceptualisation of filmic parameters such as the notion of time, mechanised movement and the illusion of depth.
Leafing through an old note-pad leads to the discovery of a flip book, and a panoramic view over Paris suddenly becomes one big festival of light. While conceiving a homage to analogue film, Scorsese manifests himself a master of digital cinema.
And yet the actors always remain his central concern. The film also contains some hints of a larger historical perspective. One of the most stunning and memorable archival documents is the tinted footage of traumatised soldiers returning from the front in the First World War.