Let's switch things up and go for a Scorcese instead.
What gritty crime drama have I picked out?
Children's film with a twist, Hugo.
My History / Moving right along
Overlooked it in theatres. Heard it was good and had something going on with its latter half
Turns out it was and it most certainly did.
Plot summary / Automatonality
The titular Hugo is an orphan that lives in the walls of a large Parisian train station in the 1930s. Hugo spends his days trying to stay fed while avoiding the station inspector who has a vindictive streak against unsupervised children loitering in the station and also gathering parts to repair an automaton.
This automaton is the only real memento he has of his late father who was a clockmaker, and Hugo is desperately trying to repair it in the hope that it will contain a message from his father. During his day to day adventures he meets a well-off girl his age, her grandfather who runs a small toy booth and a colourful hodgepodge of other regulars of the train station.
Corner 1: Adventure 8/10 / "Because this might be an adventure."
- 🚀 I can not get over how much that train station feels like an alive place I want to explore.
- 📋 There is no journey and we basically only see characters interact in the station.
- 🚀 - but I don't really care?
- 🚀 There's an ongoing theme of the two children introducing each other to new things (secret station tunnels, books, films, etc.), it's great.
Corner 2: Smart 6.5/10 / "I feel just like Jean Valjean."
- 💡 The automaton mystery is set up well, even if the payoff isn't quite what they expect.
- 💤 It's not trying to wow you with smart twists or reveals, but that's fine.
Corner 3: Heart 8/10 / "Mmm. A keyhole in the shape of a heart."
- 💖 Absolutely gorgeously shot. Every single shot could be framed and hung on a wall.
- 💖 A stellar soundtrack by Howard Shore that fits the film very well.
And that's it, triangle time!
Which leads to a score of...
72.75
Nice! Tune in next time for another taste triangle. This one felt faster than what I've done so far, and-
*points into the imaginary audience* Yes? Do you have a question?
*pretends to listen to a question* What was going on in the second half of the film?
I'm so very glad you asked!
Taste Triangle 7b: The second half of Hugo / [spoiler warning]
So, welcome back imagined audience, let's keep this review rolling.
Or rather, let's start over from the middle.
My History / [final spoiler warning]
Don't worry, I doubt I'll be splitting up many more films like this.
But wow that sure is a thing for a film to do.
I will get into what is going on starting in the plot summary below, but I went into this basically blind and strongly suggest you do too.
If the first half sounded good enough and you haven't seen the film yet, please stop reading here and just go watch it.
Plot summary / It wasn't about any of that, AT ALL.
So, the automaton comes alive thanks to the heart-shaped key the girl has. Instead of a message from his father the automaton instead draws a sketch of an iconic scene from the 1902 film A Trip to the Moon.
It was already kind of hinted at that the toy selling grandfather of the girl is somehow connected to the automaton, but the reveal that comes next is (almost) entirely out of the blue. The reveal that this jaded old man is in fact Georges Méliès, pioneer of film.
The rest of the film is a love letter to early film making, with a focus on the works of Méliès.
It doesn't abandon the plot line about the two children, but the focus is no longer on them.
Corner 1: Adventure 6/10 / "Come and dream with me."
How do you even handle rating a sudden swerve like that? I guess I'm drawing another triangle just for the second half? I'm just figuring this out as I go along.
- 📋 Basically all pretence and mystery is dropped at this point. We're going to learn about film.
- 🚀- and that's great! Not particularly adventurous sounding, but you'll likely be surprised.
- 📋 Basically all pretence and mystery is dropped at this point. We're going to learn about film.
- 🚀- and that's great! Not particularly adventurous sounding, but you'll likely be surprised.
Corner 2: Smart 8/10 / "That's really what this book is going to be about."
I know that it's based on a book that basically pulls the same trick, but who reads that and thinks "I bet I can pull that off in a film!"?!
- 💡 It's such a wildly inventive thing to do, this is exactly the type of thing the Smart corner just gobbles up.
- 💡 On top of that it somehow manages to keep all plates from the first half spinning, adequately completing every single arc. No matter how minimal.
- 💡 AND it's somehow about the horrors of World War I as well, in two of its plotlines? How?!
- 💡 It's such a wildly inventive thing to do, this is exactly the type of thing the Smart corner just gobbles up.
- 💡 On top of that it somehow manages to keep all plates from the first half spinning, adequately completing every single arc. No matter how minimal.
- 💡 AND it's somehow about the horrors of World War I as well, in two of its plotlines? How?!
Corner 3: Heart 10/10 / "And so my enchanted castle fell to ruin."
- 💖 This is a real thing that happened. Not just Méliès' amazing history of film making, the disappearance and rediscovery of both the work and the man are both very much grounded in actual events.
- 💖 The same love that went into the first half's recreation of a 1930s train station has gone into recreating both the creation process and final product of the Méliès classics.
- 💖 If anything the music gets better.
- 💖 Media about media is a plus, but this goes beyond that. It is such an earnest love letter to the birth of cinema and the magic it had then and should still have.
- 💖 This is a real thing that happened. Not just Méliès' amazing history of film making, the disappearance and rediscovery of both the work and the man are both very much grounded in actual events.
- 💖 The same love that went into the first half's recreation of a 1930s train station has gone into recreating both the creation process and final product of the Méliès classics.
- 💖 If anything the music gets better.
- 💖 Media about media is a plus, but this goes beyond that. It is such an earnest love letter to the birth of cinema and the magic it had then and should still have.
So yeah, it's a twist that I loved and something that blew me away after what was a technically superbly executed but rather light first half.
And now we... put another triangle next to the one we already had? I guess?
And now we... put another triangle next to the one we already had? I guess?
What does that even tell us? Should I just take the average of the two surface scores? The average of the score of the separate corners and calculate that surface? I never expected this much geometry to be involved... alright, let's just pick one... it's a single piece of media, so let's average the scores of the corners of the first and second triangle and then calculate a score for that new triangle:
77.51
(And, in case you were curious, just the second half got a pretty phenomenal 81.41, although it can obviously not stand on its own)That was a lot of work, I don't think it really make sense to pull this trick that often. It was a good experiment though, which is kind of what this blog is about.
Then again, this next one might need a split somewhere as well, what with it being ~3 hours long...
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