In Martin Scorsese’s award-winning family film Hugo, the director
masterfully manipulates visual representations of time-period technology in
order to develop the story’s characters and relay the importance of balance
between man and machine. Based on Brian Selznick’s novel The Invention of
Hugo Cabret, the fairytale for adults
emphasizes both mankind’s increasing reliance on the mechanical and the result
of man’s obsession with technology. Clocks, trains, and film itself link three
characters’ pasts to the movie’s present, thereby creating a metaphorical time
machine for the management of their grief and loss. Hugo (Asa Butterfield) relies on the station’s clocks for his vocation, and
he obsesses over the automaton to compensate for the loss of his father;
Gustave (Sacha Baron Cohen) depends on the order of
train-station schedules and the confident authority that only policy and
procedure can provide the war-wounded adult orphan; George Méliès (Ben
Kingsley) denies film’s existence and the subsequent damage to his artistic
pride when his work falls out of favor due to technological advances. The
complicated relationships between mankind and mechanisms are explored as each character deals with personal loss;
yet, the automaton acts as a compass throughout the film, directing Hugo,
Gustave, and George to a future together where humanity and technology are
beneficially balanced.
Time-period technological representations
begin immediately as the film opens with the
sound of a train and visual clockworks impressively dissolving into a city
grid. As the tracking shot plummets, and the bird’s eye view descends through
the maze of 1930’s Paris, Scorsese deftly navigates from the train yard and
through station crowds before launching up to Hugo’s face hidden behind an
analog clock’s number 4. The film’s use of analog clocks (with metallic
cogs and wheels mechanically passing time) is Scorsese’s window into one of the
film’s moralistic themes; observed by and felt most poignantly by young Hugo,
1930’s man depends upon clocks (wound by the unseen orphan) to direct life and
its daily activities. Instead of survival, love, and acceptance (or even more
specifically in Hugo’s case, sanctuary and vocational purpose) mankind has
become obsessed with the time and schedules provided by technology. Hugo’s
technological obsession differs in that he is seeking to rewind the clock by
repairing the broken automaton in order to reunite, on some level, with his deceased
father. This nearly obsessive desire for mechanical repair and / or advancement
is a very human coping mechanism intended to reincarnate his tragically killed
father. The boy simply must restore the automaton (based on the
real-life creations of watchmaker and magician Jean Eugène
Robert-Houdin[1]) so that an imagined message from his father, thought to
have been hidden within the automaton’s gears, can be received. Hugo, spending
his waking hours within the mechanical bowels of the train station clocks,
desires above all else to return to a happier time in the past when he worked
on the automaton with his father. His obsession with the device’s functionality
causes him to disregard the risk of the Station Inspector’s wrath, the threat
of capture, and the potential relocation to an orphanage. Hugo steals
mechanical components from George Méliès' shop because the obsessive goal of
being reunited (even metaphorically) with his father through the automaton
justifies nearly any means necessary. While neither clocks nor the automaton
can bring Hugo’s father back, parts from a mechanical mouse (stolen from
Méliès' shop) may be the life-giving medicine able to restore the automaton and relay the hidden message as the orphan attempts to
cope with personal loss. Scorsese also uses a pocket watch as a smaller, more
child sized representation of time and Hugo’s dependence upon technology.
Preceding Hugo’s nightmare, that precious link to the past is hung in a place
of safety as the boy goes to sleep. Suddenly, when the watch is gone, time and
reality disappear as Hugo transforms into the automaton. The metamorphosis from boy to machine can also been seen
as man’s loss of humanity with the ever-increasing dependence on the
mechanical.
The Station
Inspector (Gustave) is also coping with trauma, is alone, and is searching for
something greater than himself after being raised as an orphan. The loss of his
leg’s full functionality during the war created a dependence on technology; the
otherwise strapping man in apparent good health is forced to rely on a
mechanical leg brace, which constantly locks and seizes at the most inopportune
moments. His self-confidence is only attained through his official role,
supported by policies and procedures, which are driven by schedules and
technology. Gustave’s ironic relationship with technology is best displayed
when the aforementioned leg brace becomes ensnared on a departing train. While
comically portrayed, Scorsese takes Gustave back through time to the
powerlessness of his life as an orphaned child: alone, afraid, embarrassed, and
an outcast. In Hugo, and in turn-of-the
century France Paris Verdun . However, the
greatest example of positive progress, when man and technology work in concert,
occurs at Méliès’ after-party, once the recognition ceremony of the director’s
filmmaking career has been completed. Not only is Gustave no longer lonely, as
Lisette is by his side, but the tortuous leg brace has been replaced with a
technologically advanced medical device created by Hugo; gears and cogs shift
in a steam punk design that symbolize the Station Inspector’s arrival in the
future. Meanwhile, George Méliès’
creation, the automaton, watches the festivities as a guest of honor after
finally being repaired.
As Hugo grieves his father, and Gustave
laments his disability, George Méliès mourns for the loss of his art after falling into obscurity
near the end of World War I. Technological
advances created the ability to produce faster, cheaper, and less-labor
intensive films. Méliès’ films, created as a labor of love with
elaborately staged sets, hand-painted frames, stop-trick techniques, and
fantasy-themed stories fell out of favor. To survive after a bankruptcy in
1913, the father of special effects sold “many of his 500-plus films to be
melted down and made into boot heels.”[3] With the constant unrelenting forward movement of
technology, accomplishments and innovations of the past were left behind, and a
kiosk at Hugo’s train station was to be Méliès’ finale. However, granddaughter Isabelle and orphan
Hugo have other plans, and they take Méliès back through time with the viewing
of A Trip to the Moon, previously thought to have been lost. The
automaton, previously revealed in a notebook discovered by Méliès while
emptying Hugo’s pockets under suspicion of thievery, reminds the film-father of
greater times and creative innovation. Mama Jeanne summarizes her spouse’s conflict with advancing
technology, “Georges, you've tried to forget the past for so long, but it has
caused you nothing but unhappiness. Maybe it's time you tried to remember.”
Supported by friends and family, Méliès is able to find balance with the
technology that provided so much creative joy to him before the war.
The importance of balance between man and machine connect 1930’s Paris
with the modern age; clocks, trains, film, and the automaton remind us that
schedules, modern transportation, smart phones, and avatars cannot replace
life, vitality, or purpose. Technology can often be used to mask or cope with
grief and loss, but only the human element can truly heal. Man is not a
machine, and the film’s comparison of man to
machine is as valid today as it was in the 1930’s. Various gadgets throughout Martin Scorsese’s Hugo symbolically
allow three of the film’s most memorable characters to cope with grief and loss
until they are brought together to find acceptance and peace. Scorsese,
a connoisseur of film history, appropriately leaves us with the automaton’s
image, combining technology and the shape of a man to reemphasize the moralistic theme relayed throughout our metaphorical
time traveling adventures; when man and technology are balanced, the
outcome is more likely to be harmonious.
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