Hugo

Time requires maintenance. Each ticking tock must be delicately managed in order to ensure punctual consistency and historical longevity. This is no easy task, and cataclysmic events can disrupt its narrative flow, as can the resurrection of the unforeseen, the one terrorizing established norms and constructs in the maniacal hopes of strengthening their resolve (the masters of war), the other invigorating traditional forms with revitalized content which in turn can redesign them if the insertion of difference is compelling enough to transmit a reconstituted concrete variability (inception) while (eventually) finding a receptive influential audience (innovative exoteric visionaries). Time will continue to pass regardless but its acknowledgement and associated terms of reference (habitual action X producing results D reinforced by the creation of pattern H) will need a cultural catalyst, from which things can begin anew.

We see both sides of this matrix at work in Martin Scorsese's exceptional new film Hugo, which examines the relationship between an orphan and an elderly toymaker. The orphan Hugo (Asa Butterfield) lives in the walls of a Parisian train station where he diligently keeps its various clocks running on time. From these walls, he eyes George Méliès's (Ben Kingsley) toyshop in the hopes of obtaining parts which will help him fix an automaton which was acquired by his father (Jude Law) before his untimely death. Inspector Gustav (Sacha Baron Cohen) monitors the station's passageways with a strong desire to uphold law and order (and send orphans to the orphanage). Monsieur Labisse (Christopher Lee) operates a dusty bookshop from which he encourages a love of lifelong learning.

Time was disrupted within Hugo's narrative by the introduction of film making to the Parisian artistic scene. Infatuated with the medium, a magician builds his own camera in order to share the dreamscapes of his imaginings. Having cultivated an audience, he continues to create profusely thereby compartmentalizing various tenants of his vision. But World War I annihilates many markets successfully established in France and beyond, and in its aftermath his audience fails to rematerialize and his films must be sold and melted down.

Time passes and due to the serendipitous reverberations of two curious youths an historical echo increases its volume. Hugo and his friend Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz) discover a mystery whose clues lead them to volumes housed in a local library. From these volumes, clues transform into probabilities and an unconscious cultural qualifier approaches remanifestation. An automaton whose ability to produce felicitous active images is brought back to life through the ingenuity of friendship, and returned to its creator.

And an innovative exoteric visionary's legacy is recognized and celebrated, having been resurrected from the ashes of the masters of war. One of time's great disruptions is rediscovered and catalogued in order to ensure its historical longevity.