‘Hugo’: Of machines and emotions!

Martin Scorsese’s Hugo destabilizes the machine/emotion binary, locating human emotions in a labyrinth of revolving clock-wheels literally. The film sufficiently revamps the thriller genre (and the biopic as well) and keeps you on your toes till the end when the mystery is eventually revealed. A strange mystery seems to lurk in the heart of the automaton which Hugo’s father sets out to unravel, but is killed in a museum fire. Little Hugo takes upon himself, the responsibility of completing his father’s unfinished task, only to arrive at a fascinating truth. What is this truth that is hidden in the heart of the automaton? Well, you have to find that out yourself.

Most of the film is shot in a busy railway station, where little stories unfold with remarkable poignancy. The film filters out from the milling crowd those who are stationed for life in this very transitory space, and tells their stories: Madame Emile, the coffee shop-owner and Monsieur Frick, the newspaper seller; the superbly funny Inspector Gustave and the beautiful flower-girl Lisette. Little tales of romantic attachment punctuate a story predominantly torn apart by the war. The Inspector’s ailing leg is a constant reminder of the terrible experiences of the battlefield; while Georges Méliès’ tragedy owes to it completely.

The film offers a powerhouse of performances: especial mention should be made of Asa Butterfield as Hugo and Sacha Baron Cohen as Inspector Gustave. Ben Kingsley as George Méliès brings into his performance a sense of loss that becomes almost palpable.

Hugo is truly different. Shot in 3D, the film is a tribute to the yesteryear masters of filmmaking, the very foundation on which Hugo itself has built itself. I would suggest that Hugo should be seen in conjunction with The Artist (both films being biopics of sorts) which bagged most of the important Academy Awards this year. You would agree with me that Hugo deserved no less. My guess is that the Academy Award jury has of late become more affectionate towards the populist, and this is exactly why The Artist won.

Image Courtesy: butr.com

“The Artist”: Compellingly Retro

A quasi-biopic, Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist swept the Oscars with tsunamic magnificence, and deservingly so. You can’t help love the film; yet, all along, you feel the lack of something. I would not even attempt to define this ‘something’, for honestly, I have not been able to figure that out. Perhaps, I could not really identify with George Valentin’s (modelled on Douglas Fairbanks who continued to make pantomime movies heedless of the triumph of the talkies) sentiments: an adamantine yesteryear hero unremittingly resisting change. In this, Valentin seems to belong to a world far removed from ours. The feeling is intensified by the retro look-and-feel of the film. The contemporary viewers’ alienation, I believe, is intentionally orchestrated; or else, The Artist could not have been a full-fledged retro.

The Artist has captured a very important moment in the history of cinema: the talkies replacing silent films, whereby several acting careers were ruined while several were made. The Artist symbolically refers to this rise and fall in a single shot involving the staircase of the Kinograph Studios, with a stream of people climbing up and down. It is in this scene that a broken George Valentin meets a peppy Peppy Miller, newly recruited by the company, as he comes down the stairs. Apart from this scene, there is not much on the transition a part of the industry had to suffer through. However, the havoc wrought by the arrival of the talkies is metaphorically represented in the heroic battle Valentin puts up against this inevitable change. Interestingly enough, Valentin’s struggle to prove the world wrong is no less heroically melodramatic than the struggles he had so far braved on screen. And, his final predicament and recovery are rather predictable; but this does not really go against the film. This is because Hazanavicius adheres to the generic tradition of the 1920s French romantic comedy drama with orthodoxy and this deliberate stance attributes to The Artist the status of a complete retro. A postmodern metanarrative par excellence, The Artist effortlessly blurs the border between hardcore commercial and art-house cinema.


Thematically, The Artist doesn’t appeal much. But, the very experience of watching the film is rather compelling. (I’m surprised that the film did not bag a few more Oscars in the technical categories, apart from Best Costume Design and Best Original Score) Anyone who has watched the film can never forget that scary dream sequence from which Valentin wakes up with a jolt, perspiring vigorously. Again, the last scene of Tears of Love (which leaves Valentin bankrupt) where Valentin sinks into the quicksand and is buried is invariably reminiscent of Ray’s Nayak: the hero sinking into a heap of currency notes. As I have said earlier, The Artist represents a world with a different set of values, where an unpaid butler refuses to resign even after a year. And of course, Uggie, the dog! The second lead actor of the film (if Dujardin is the first), Uggie, steals the show with his humane act.


Jean Dujardin has brilliantly enacted not only a real life character, but recreated an age through his performance. The Oscar could not have been anyone else’s this year. However, what I could not understand is why Bérénice Bejo was nominated for Best Actor Female in a Supporting Role. Wasn’t she very much the lead actor?

Image courtesy: The Weinstein Company
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