Hugo: Prompt 3 Extended

Modern Times and Hugo seem to have a few of the same ideas going; a good thing, because Hugo is set around the time Modern Times was filmed. Both recognize machines as useful tools, but stress both practicality and the need for creativity and leisure, mechanical or otherwise.

The station inspector explains firmly to Isabelle and Hugo that machines are there to be practical- they are there to work in shops, get on trains, and get off them. There is a time and a place for poetry, et cetera. Yet, the automaton exists for entertainment, and so do movies, which are conveyed as wonderfully magical machines used to express creativity and imagination.

Chaplin uses humor to express these ideas. He is assaulted by an impractical machine that alternately feeds him metal bolts and spills food everywhere. The machine is rejected, but Chaplin's character must find work somehow, and he does so by working factory machines. This gives him a living, but it's an important point in the movie that this is not the only factor of a happy life; necessary too is occasional leisure- like roller skating- and people that love you, demonstrated by the homeless girl friend.

From last week's blog:

Further, if the automaton is also a metaphor for Melies, the broken man, Hugo is really dreaming about Melies, and whether or not he can give the answers Hugo needs. 

Scorsese might be explaining the very real fears of a scared little boy by way of a nightmare. Twisting Melies' 'dream' movies into nightmares would make sense with the excuse of artistic license. Maybe this explains the automaton-Hugo dream?

...he might just be searching for paternal or familial love. After all, he is only twelve.

Does Hugo find the love he wants? We can assume so. Although I don't think that the Station Inspector's saving him from the tracks is significant (we have to assume that the guy has some human decency and would save a kid anyway) I think the climax to the film, the point where the main question is answered, is when Melies claims Hugo as his own. It resolves mostly everything. Hugo gets the paternal care he wants, Melies isn't such a broken down man anymore, and the automaton is fixed and returned to it's creator. A neat ending.