Mechanics of The Heart

Martin Scorsese's new film, "Hugo", is a beautiful adaptation of Brian Selznick's children's book, "The Invention of Hugo Cabret," and a well-oiled homage to early film and story-telling. After Mr. Scorsese's long list of serious, heartbreaking films like "Raging Bull," "Goodfellas" or Taxi Driver," it seems he has taken to exploring different genres, as in last years "Shutter Island," or this years "Hugo," which leaves the frowning adult world and enters a child's.
Hugo (Asa Butterfield) is an orphan living in a 1930's Parisian train station where he oils, repairs and sets all the stations clocks. In his old forgotten room deep in the interior of the station where steam rises from gratings and gears eternally rotate, Hugo has an old Atomaton, a sort of mechanical man, poised to begin writing, Hugo believes something from his dead father, a watchmaker (Jude Law).
After his father's death, Hugo is taken to the train station by his slurring uncle (Ray Winstone) to eventually replace him as timekeeper. This uncle leaves and Hugo is left to fend for himself in the cavernous train station against a Station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) hell-bent on sending him to an orphanage. There are many scenes of Hugo running from the Station Inspector and his orphan-sniffing doberman through a maze of legs and passageways taken straight from the imagination of a child beneath the dinner table and Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times." Hugo, all the while is repairing the Atomaton with parts he steals from an enigmatic toy vendor, Georges Méliès, (Ben Kingsley) and his Goddaughter, Isabelle, (Chloe Grace Moretz.)
This is the Méliès of early silent cinema whose film "A Trip To The Moon" contains a certain image of the Man on the Moon with a projectile in his eye that has become ubiquitous in modern culture. Mr. Scorsese uses this image to great effect in "Hugo," as he does with countless other images. This film is as much a lesson in early film as anything else. 
"Hugo" is a great adventure into a sad child's world and the depression of a man who thinks his once celebrated art, his calling in life, are now forgotten and destroyed. While this film may not be entertaining in the same way something like "Puss in Boots" or "Cars 2," it maintains that not only Disney/Pixar can make children's movies that hold cinematic weight. Characters are complex, The Station Inspector's war wound effects his confidence, Méliès transforms from a grumpy old man to a magician and the magic between could lift even the coldest heart.