Monday, October 7, 2013

"Hugo" - One Excellent Movie


Once again Cat has sustained her perfect score in movie recommendations with "Hugo."  We were talking over the last few days whether a love story can be high art and you can judge for yourself but you will need to watch the movie as I'm not going to blow the story for you.

It's tempting to say it is absolutely charming but that dismisses the wonderful creativity with mindless superlatives and that would be unfortunate given the delight the children take in discovering vocabulary.  That alone is charming, particularly relative to the vocabulary of the current generation which is barely adequate for ordering a bowl of soup.

This isn't one love story but rather quite a few of them and there is a depth that makes it all the more captivating.  It isn't only about love stories between individuals but also of the passion in a man's life for his work.  A really wonderful scene was when Hugo showed Isabel the Eiffel Tower and told her about the meaning of machines.  I'm not going to explain that as you'll have to watch for yourself to discover what that explanation was.

Cat didn't give me a synopsis, she just told me she was sure I would like it.  Without a synopsis, perhaps you will get a hint of the movie in the fact that Martin Scorsese directed it after a story by Brian Selznick and one of the stars is Ben Kingsley.  Hopefully you know the magnificent job he did playing Gandhi.  Here's another bit of intrigue:  Johnny Depp was one of the producers.  If you are concerned about wasting your time on a piece of fluff, don't.  This is much, much more.

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