We took my 86 year-old mother to see “Hugo” in 3D yesterday, she had a great time, she enjoyed it just as much as all the young children in the theatre. Luckily, mom managed to keep the 3D glasses on and got to enjoy the amazing tricks this technology has to offer. I found the new 3D technology impressive, but what struck me more about the story is how it handled the “good” guys and the “bad” guys.
Spoiler Alert…. If you haven’t seen the movie, stop reading and go see it. Allow yourself to get lost in the world created by Brian Selznick, in his book “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” (according to Wikipedia, Brian Selznick is a first cousin twice removed from David O. Selznick, the Hollywood producer of “Gone With the Wind).
I have not read the original book, but John Logan wrote Martin Scorsese film version and they managed to pull of a very interesting trick. As you know, a good story has a powerful protagonist pitted against an equally powerful antagonist. It is the protagonist’s struggle against the antagonist that forms the bulk of a well-told story. In “Hugo” we meet Hugo Cabret, a young man who lives inside a train station in Paris who runs up against the bad tempered Toy Shop Owner and the Station Inspector who comes with a fierce Doberman pinscher (who looks exactly like him, imagine that)
I won’t give you a complete plot summary here; you can find that all over the web. But really, don’t read about the movie ahead of time, just go and see it and allow the magic to work on you. What I admire so much about it’s that as the story unfolds, we come to see that the “bad” guys in the movie aren’t really bad, they are flawed. And the “good” guys don’t always do the right thing. But are trying to do good things for others. You need a “bad” guy in the story so the hero has someone to challenge him, so he can see that he has abilities that he never knew he had. That as in life, our struggles against circumstances, either makes us or breaks us. We either learn to rise to the occasion and rise above the challenge or we let life chew us up.
In “Hugo” you got to see that toward the end, even the “bad” guys have redeemable qualities; they had the capacity to be open and vulnerable and that they had to capacity to love others. For me, it is a far more refreshing “message” for children to learn and for adults to be reminded. We still live in a world filled “enemies” and “criminals” and “bad” people. “Hugo” reminds us that we are all struggling, struggling to understand why our lives have turned out the way they have and that you can appreciate that we all have reasons why we act the way we do. That you can’t take things at face value, especially when it comes to people. My own flaw is that I make snap judgments about people very easily and dismiss them, when I need to remind myself that I am no better than the next person and everyone has a story to tell.
Have you seen “Hugo” ? What did you think? Or do you like to see “good” guys and “bad” guys duke it out and see the bad guy get it in the end? I can think of lots of “bad” guys who deserved their “comeuppance” in the end. Do you have a preference? If so, I’d love to hear from you.
Hi Rachel. Thanks for sharing your movie-going experience. I have not seen this movie but I do appreciate it when the “bad guys” get what they deserve, especially if it involves irony.
You made an interesting statement – we are all struggling against circumstances – I like that. We all face our own demons and bad experiences every day. We can only hope we come out victorious most of the time, or at the very least, learn from them and get stronger.
Here’s hoping you rise triumphant over your circumstances!
Patricia Rickrode
w/a Jansen Schmidt
I haven’t seen the movie yet, Rachel, but I love my bad guys to be flawed. Great post and thanks so much!
Hey there Rachel!
So you busted your mom out, eh? How’s that going? Didn’t you say that you were moving her into assisted living? Glad she enjoyed the movie. And it sound like you liked it as well. Thanks for the review.
And me? Well, who doesn’t like a happy ending every once in a while. 🙂
Karen, we haven’t moved mom into the Residential Care Home yet, she is still on the waiting list, so that means we get to have her home for Christmas. She had a really good time.
I saw the movie, Rachel, and enjoyed it. I viewed the story as a coming of age tale for Hugo, fraught with the challenges generally placed in the protagonist’s path in such stories (i.e. authority figures who misunderstand him and against whom he rebels). These two antagonists never seemed especially “bad” to me, just hard-hearted in the single arena where their character weaknesses resided. And they didn’t change by the end of the story so much as their “inner good guy” was revealed through the actions of Hugo and love. I guess if I had to say what the theme of the film was, I’d say “love conquers all.” No?
Diane, I agree that love conquers all, especially when you are given the chance to understand that people who at first appear to be “enemies” have problems of their own. thanks for stopping by and I love your take on the movie.
I actually find “pure evil” villains to be unbelievable. Very few people in the world are evil to the core. Most of them have something soft, or good, or redeeming about them. So I like to see that chink in the armor in villains in stories as well. Excellent review 🙂