Summary: A 12-year-old orphan, clock-keeper and thief lives in the walls of a Paris train station in 1930. His survival depends upon his anonymity, but he soon becomes embroiled in mystery involving a stolen key, a treasured notebook, and an enigmatic mechanical man.
Analysis: One of the things I admire about Martin Scorsese is the versatility. As much as he often works with the same actors and will always come back to the American gangster genre which he's become synonymous with, from film to film he will shake up his palette. This has seen him stretch his wings into pure genre thrillers, documentaries, costume dramas and historical biopics.
Following on from last year's dark psychological period thriller "Shutter Island", Scorsese has opted for something at the complete opposite end of the spectrum - a family fantasy adventure. Not only is it his first 3D film, but it's a kind of film that he's certainly never come even close to tackling before which should hopefully make the results refreshing.
"Gladiator" scribe John Logan has penned this adaptation of the Brian Selznick's bestseller "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" which Scorsese shot in London and Paris during the second half of last year. For the titular role he cast wide-eyed 13-year-old British actor Asa Butterfield, probably best known for his roles on film in "Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang" and "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" and on TV as a young Mordred in BBC's "Merlin".
Joining him in the female lead role is rising actress Chloë Moretz ("Kick Ass," "Let Me In"), while the adult supporting cast is truly astonishing - Ben Kingsley, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jude Law, Christopher Lee, Ray Winstone, Emily Mortimer, Richard Griffiths, Helen McCrory, Frances de la Tour and Michael Stuhlbarg amongst others. One name not expected to appear though is Leonardo DiCaprio, marking Scorsese's first narrative feature in nine years that hasn't starred the actor.
Cinematic pioneer Georges Méliès is not just an inspiration but a key character in the project, and Scorsese tells The Guardian that the automaton in the story is essentially a metaphor for cinema itself - "how people express themselves using the technology emotionally and psychologically. It's the connection between the people, and the thing that's missing – how it supplies what's missing."
Those who think Scorsese is merely taking it easy on 'Hugo' should think again. The filmmaker has always been a huge fan of the cinematic form in and of itself, never afraid to experiment with it or push it in directions the audience may not want to go. With a=the film set at a turning point in movie history and adopting a technology that has the possibility of changing the very nature of movies and how they're seen, I think we'll definitely get something special here.
