Hugo(2011)

Plot Summary

• In 1931, Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), a 12-year-old boy, lives with his widowed father (Jude Law), a kind and devoted master clock-maker in Paris. Hugo's father takes him to see films and loves the films of Georges Méliès best of all. Hugo's father finds a broken automaton - a mechanical man created to write with a pen, abandoned in the attic of a museum. The automation is a windup figure, like a music box with the secret to its functioning in its mechanism. He and Hugo try to repair it, documenting their work in a notebook.Hugo's father is burned alive in a museum fire, and Hugo is taken away by his uncle Claude (Ray Winstone), an alcoholic watchmaker who is responsible for maintaining the clocks in the railway station Gare Montparnasse. Claude stops Hugo from attending school and puts him to work instead. His uncle teaches him to take care of the clocks, then disappears. When Claude goes missing, Hugo continues maintaining the clocks, fearing that the Station Inspector Gustave Daste will send him away if Claude's absence is discovered. Daste wears a leg brace. Dante chases Hugo every time he comes out of the station walls to get his supplies. But Hugo knows every entry and exit and is able to evade capture by Dante and his dog.Hugo lives between the walls of the station, maintaining the clocks, stealing food and working on his father's most ambitious project: repairing a broken automaton a mechanical man who is supposed to write with a pen. Convinced that the automaton contains a message from his father, Hugo goes to desperate lengths to fix it, but the machine requires a heart-shaped key.Hugo is able to secretly watch the entire station and all the shops in it, from inside the walls of the station. He observes that Monsieur Frick (Richard Griffiths) who is a newspaper vendor at the station and madame Emile (Frances De La Tour) who run a pastry shop at the station, both aged people, gently flirt with each other as a daily ritual.Hugo steals mechanical parts in the station to repair the automaton, but he is caught by a toy store owner named Georges Melies (Ben Kingsley). Georges is a bitter old man, who makes Hugo empty his pockets and takes Hugo's notebook from him, with notes and drawings for fixing the automaton. Georges recognizes the drawings and refuses to give the notebook back.To recover the notebook, Hugo follows Melies to his house and meets Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), a girl close to his age and Georges' goddaughter. Hugo was waiting outside Georges' house, and she convinces him to go home and promises to help. The next day, Melies gives some ashes to Hugo, referring to them as the notebook's remains, but Isabelle informs him that the notebook was not burnt. Finally, Melies agrees that Hugo may earn the notebook back by working for him until he pays for all the things he stole from the shop. Hugo works in the toy shop, and in his time off manages to fix the automaton, but it is still missing one part a heart shaped key.Hugo introduces Isabelle to the movies, which her godfather has never let her see (they sneak in a silent movie projection without buying a ticket), while she introduces Hugo to a bookstore where its owner first mistrusts Hugo. At first, Hugo is not trusting of Isabelle and tries to leave her, but Isabelle turns out to have the key to the automaton when she tries to find Hugo and gets trapped in the process. When they use the key to activate the automaton, it produces a drawing of a film scene. Hugo remembers it is the film his father always talked about as the first film he ever saw (A Trip to the Moon). They discover that the drawing made by the automaton is signed with the name of Isabelle's godfather and take it to her home for an explanation.In the Melies home Hugo shows Georges' wife Jeanne (Helen McCrory the drawing made by the automaton, but she will not tell them anything and makes them hide in a room when Georges comes home. While hiding from him, Isabelle and Hugo find a secret cabinet and accidentally release pictures and screen boards of Georges' creations just as Georges and Jeanne enter the room. Georges feels depressed and betrayed, who bans Hugo from his house.However, Hugo gets the bookstore owner's friendship, and he helps Hugo and Isabelle search a for a book on the history of film. Several days later, at the Film Academy Library, Hugo and Isabelle find a book about the history of cinema that praises Melies' contributions. They are surprised that the author, Rene Tabard (Michael Stuhlbarg), refers to Georges Melies as having died in the Great War (World War I). When they try to understand the reason for this error, Monsieur Tabard himself appears, and the children tell him that Melies is alive. Tabard reveals himself as a devotee of Melies's films who still owns a copy of " A Trip to the Moon". Excited at the chance to meet Méliès again, René agrees to meet Isabelle and Hugo at Georges' home to show his copy of A Trip to the Moon.Finding the heart-shaped key on the station railway tracks, Hugo drops down to the track to retrieve it, and is run over by an out-of-control train that smashes through the station. He wakes up from the nightmare, but hears an ominous ticking emanating from himself, and discovers he has been turned into the automaton. Hugo wakes up again: it was only another nightmare.Hugo, Isabelle and Tabard go to Georges's home, and at first Jeanne does not welcome them, telling them to go before her husband wakes. However, Jeanne accepts their offer to show " A Trip to the Moon" when it is revealed that she was one of the actresses in Georges's films. While they are watching the film, Georges appears and explains how he came to make movies, invented the special effects, and how he lost faith in films when the World War I began, being forced to sell his films in order to get money, and getting the toy shop in order to survive. George is finally convinced to cherish his accomplishments rather than regret his lost dreams. Georges recounts that, as a stage magician, he was fascinated by motion pictures and used film to create imaginative works through his Star Film Company. Forced into bankruptcy after the war, he closed his studio and sold or destroyed his films. He laments that even an automaton he built and donated to a museum was lost in a fire and that there is nothing left of his life's work. Hugo realizes it is the one he has repaired.Hugo decides to go back to the station to get the automaton, but on arrival he is cornered by the station inspector Daste (Sacha Baron Cohen) who is in charge of arresting vagabond boys & put them in foster care & has suspected of someone living inside the station & came close to catching Hugo on several occasions, and his dog. He escapes and runs to the top of the clock tower and hides by climbing out onto the hands of the clock. Daste had learned of Claude's death and threatens to take Hugo to the orphanage to torment him.Once the inspector is gone, he grabs the automaton and runs for the exit with it, but he is trapped by the inspector and the automaton is thrown to the railway tracks. Hugo tries to save it but there is a train coming. Climbing onto the tracks anyway, he is almost run over when the officer saves him and the automaton and proceeds to detain him. Hugo pleads with the officer, but then Georges arrives and claims that Hugo is in his care.Finally, Georges gets a tribute ceremony to his movies, Tabard announcing that some 80 films of his have been recovered and restored. Georges thanks Hugo for his actions, and then invites the audience to "follow his dreams". Georges is named a professor at the Film Academy, and is paid tribute through a showcase of his films recovered by René. Hugo becomes an apprentice of Georges and Isabelle decides to be a writer. Hugo and his new family celebrate at the apartment, and Isabelle begins to write down Hugo's own story.

Storyline

• Hugo is an orphan boy living in the walls of a train station in 1930s Paris. He learned to fix clocks and other gadgets from his father and uncle, which he puts to use keeping the train station clocks running. The only thing that he has left that connects him to his dead father is a mechanical man that doesn't work. Hugo needs to unlock the secret he believes it contains. On his adventures, he meets a shopkeeper who works in the train station and his adventure-seeking goddaughter Isabelle. Hugo and Isabelle try to unlock the old man's memories. — napierslogs Hugo is an orphan who lives in a Paris railway station, tending to the station clocks during his uncle's mysterious absence. He scrounges food from the vendors and steals mechanical parts. Hugo's father was a watchmaker, and Hugo inherited his father's talent for all things mechanical. Years before, Hugo's father found an intricate mechanical man, but they could never figure out how it worked. Hugo befriends Isabelle, and together they have an adventure. — garykmcd Hiding within the walls and shadows of a busy railway station in 1930s Paris, orphaned 12-year-old genius Hugo lives a mysterious life maintaining the cavernous station's clocks. But Hugo has another secret: a broken automaton, a keepsake from his late watchmaker father. And as Hugo befriends Isabelle, an eccentric kindred spirit, the two children embark on an exciting mission to decipher the silent robot's cryptic message. Above all, the two adventurers must tackle a challenging task: the remarkable machine needs repairing. Who knows where the last crucial key element is? — Nick Riganas