Hugo vs A.I.

Hugo (Asa Butterfield) lives in a clock tower, inside a train depot, and is able to navigate the inner workings of the entire station from behind walls, ceilings, catwalks, clock faces, and grates, without being detected. He steals food to survive, but also tiny gears, tools and machine parts to repair a damaged automaton his father died without finishing. The last missing part is a key in the shape of a heart. In Hugo’s search for the heart-shaped key, he has to dodge the station’s marshal (Sasha Baron Cohen), the owner of the toy shop (Sir Ben Kingsley), and a variety of adults who would turn him in to the police or orphanage. Hugo has few allies, although a new friend, Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), is intelligent, trustworthy, and up for adventure. Hugo feels like the automaton (a chromed-up robot boy) contains a message from his father (Jude Law), and that if he can repair it, then everything else might be repaired as well. Hugo believes the world operates like a machine, with no unnecessary parts. The automaton has a necessary missing part, and so does Hugo (both heart-shaped). Other characters show up that are missing the same thing; whether and how they fit together is integral to Hugo’s success as a story.

I’m aware how precious this all sounds, but trust me: Hugo is a fresh, exciting, beautiful movie. Sentimental, yes, but in careful, genuine ways, and about something actually worthy of being sentimental: the origins of film and special effects. At oine point, a character describes going to the movies as dreaming while you’re awake. You could describe Hugo the same way. Martin Scorsese directed Hugo, not just with an incredible attention to detail (the sets, skyline, trains, clocks, costumes, and even dogs all look like they were chosen under a jeweler’s loupe), but with that same love and sentimentality to cinema that this movie salutes so well. You see, Hugo has a secret: George, the bitter owner of the toy shop, is actually George Melies, a real-life filmmaking pioneer. You’re probably familiar with his A Trip To The Moon, but he made many more fantastic adventure movies in his glass movie studio. Scorsese recreates scenes from these movies, and, I believe, presents some of the actual pieces (if he does, they’re handled seamlessly). They’re spellbinding, featuring tomb-raiders, mermaids, spacemen, and everything else that unwittingly led to nearly everything, good and bad, we watch today.

The lazy pitch about Hugo is that it’s such a shock that the director of Raging Bull and Goodfellas did such a good job with a family fantasy movie. I suppose it seems more of a Spielberg genre, along the lines of Hook, or…Spielberg hasn’t really made all that many family fantasies, has he? Where did that reputation come from? Scorsese is perfect for directing Hugo, because it needs a good director, and he’s the best. It’s really that simple. Hugo is hypnotic to look at; I was searching the screen, trying to see every part before the camera moved again. Every set is as postcard-stylized as the images in Amelie, and those vintage movie scenes are so wonderful, I’m hoping there’s a dozen more as DVD extras. And Scorsese has directed Hugo’s cast to some of the best performances of the year. Butterfield and Moretz are great in the film’s young leads, but Ben Kingsley moved me the most. Full of anger and regret, his Melies is a troubled, talented man, unable to open his heart to friendship, because he’s closed it off creatively. Helen McRory plays Melies’ wife, and matches Kingsley scene for scene.

Spielberg directed a movie Hugo reminded me a lot of, but it’s probably not a comparison many would make. A.I. is also about a boy on a mission, the relationship of humans to machines, unlikely friendships, and how a fantastical world of technology divides and unites us simultaneously.

Originally meant for Stanley Kubrick, A.I. is darker than much of Spielberg’s output, but also frontloaded with whimsical special effects. He eases us into this sadder, meaner science fiction world, by distracting us with pretty lights and machines. Haley Joel Osment stars as David, an artificial boy created with the idea of adding him to the family. David has the ability to learn, maybe even to love. It’s fairly clear that David can never truly replicate the feeling of love, but he definitely learns to recognize love in other people, and to seek out that response. He’s adopted by a couple (Sam Robards and Frances O’Connor), who have lost a real child, and things work, kind of, for a while. Eventually, David is abandoned, and heads into the city, like Pinocchio, to become a real boy. He’s joined on his journey by Teddy, his bear; and by Gigolo Joe (Jude Law), a “mecha” whose sole purpose is sexually satisfying women. It’s one hell of a performance. Law, in patent leather and slicked hair, is believably robotic, but also as charismatic as a rock star. He’s like a horny C3PO in disguise as David Bowie. You’ll see kids at Hugo. There weren’t any at A.I. It’s too decadent and creepy. Good. It’s like if someone saw Blade Runner and wondered if anything cute had been edited out. Cute is just on the surface of A.I. though. David is put in serious danger; Teddy and Gigolo Joe aren’t as much defense as you might hope.

Ultimately, A.I. isn’t as successful as Hugo, and I’m afraid it’s because David, as sincere and mature as Haley Joel Osment’s performance is throughout, won’t ever find the key to make his heart real. There’s a reason Hugo is about a boy seeking to fix an automaton, rather than an automaton seeking to fix itself. There’s no Toy Story conceit to A.I., in which David is secretly real. He’s mecha through and through. We get deeper into the science fiction of A.I. towards the end; it’s possible we aren’t just looking at the future. Even without the work Kubrick did behind the scenes and to the screenplay before his death, you’d see him in A.I.’s final frustrating moments. A.I. is a good movie, even if it leaves you cold. But, Spielberg would never have tackled it if he didn’t genuinely love movies. Like Scorsese, he saw the value in celebrating the work of one of the masters, and in putting the finishing touches on a film someone else never got the chance to make. Scorsese beat him to the punch by thinking of the wide-eyed movie lovers in the audience, and then putting a couple of them on screen.

Hugo: A

A.I.: B+