Yes, separating the Church of Cinematology from The Beautiful People's Republic of Hollywood is indeed on the line this year as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences meets again tomorrow night to proclaim the -President- winner of this years Best Picture with "The Artist" the favorite and mostly likely self indulgent leader of the pack.
Beyond the Academy's propensity for trans-sexually rolling around in the hay with itself and zeroing in on a pretty much silent film that tells the tale of two silent film era stars, there's another hot contender for the title that some cine-philes are calling an even greater film and a shout out to the French, of all people, as the originators of our celluloid dreams best known today as movies with Martin Scorsese's masterful "Hugo".
It is heartening, more or less, that in this day of "phony theologies" Hollywood is holding its head up high as usual, steadfast in its faith in the one true Light that spreads out equally before us all....
"Hugo"
/> Georges Méliès has been called the Grandfather of Science Fiction Films. You probably know him best as the man who launched a rocket smack dab into the eye of the man in the moon back in the day before "Talkies". Martin Scorsese teaches his audience much worth recalling about this cinema pioneer in his homage, "Hugo" nominated for Best Picture and an amazing film made in this visionaries memory it is, indeed. You could even argue that the entire movie is Scorsese's love letter to Méliès.
Did you know that Méliès made over 500 silent films? That his studio was made entirely out of glass? That Méliès' color films were entirely hand painted? That Méliès was a magician and the original studio FX guy? Or that Méliès actually built many for real automatons?
Hugo winds up spilling the beans on Méliès in the process of telling the story of Hugo, a little boy who makes friends with a grumpy old toy salesman in Paris, played by Sir Ben Kingsley. With the help of a gorgeous automaton, Hugo discovers that the crotchity old toy peddler is actually the famed director Georges Méliès but in the process we meet many wonderful characters on the promenade, strangers and foes even who all become family in the process of "fixing things" or making things right, as right as possible, again.
In a cruel twist of fate, the French Army wound up melting down most of Méliès films after the First World War. Méliès also did, in fact, wind up in a toy shop broke and almost completely forgotten in 1925. Méliès sold toys at the Gare Montparnasse.
Over the past century the great art form of cinema became the great family entertainment. Based on "The Invention of Hugo Cabret", half graphic novel, half prose, by Brian Selznick, the movie is a delightful coming of age fable. Its various subjects include magic, tradition, respect for the past and affection between generations, all bound up in the history of the cinema and the machinery invented to capture images on strips of film and project them onto screens. The story of Hollywood has been told many times, most notably in the best seller "Hollywood: The Dream Factory"
Hugo is set in Paris in 1931 and begins with a breathtaking shot of the city, as the camera swoops down on to a busy railway station. It flies along a narrow platform between two steam trains, crosses a busy concourse and ends up on the 12-year-old Hugo, who is peering at the world from behind the figure "4" of a giant clock. Hugo (Asa Butterfield) has inherited a love of tinkering with machinery from his late father, and has quite recently taken over the job of superintending the station's clocks from his drunken uncle. The boy lives in the hidden tunnels and passageways of the building, where he's repairing an automaton. He's a crafty Dickensian orphan, a benign phantom of the opera, a blood brother of Quasimodo, a cinematic voyeur looking out on the world like the photographer in Hitchcock's Rear Window. Fate has brought him there, and it then draws him into the orbit of a querulous old man, Georges (Ben Kingsley), who runs an old-fashioned shop on the station selling toys and doing mechanical repairs, assisted by his 12-year-old god-daughter, Isabelle. Hugo becomes involved with the old man when he's accused of theft and has a cherished book of drawings confiscated. He is then assisted by Isabelle in retrieving the book, and in turn, when he discovers she's forbidden to go to the movies, he takes her on a great "adventure", a visit to the lost world of silent movies at a season of old films. She is overwhelmed.
The literate Isabelle is a great admirer of Dickens, and a succession of clever Dickensian twists ensue as the labyrinthine plot takes the pair on a journey into a mysterious past. They discover the origins of the movies in the late-19th-century careers of the Lumière brothers, who put on the first picture show in Paris in 1895, and Georges Méliès, the professional magician, who became obsessed after attending this historical screening. The Lumières photographed the world as it was and didn't believe the cinema had a future. Méliès turned his theatre into a picture palace, built his own studio and became a prolific producer of fantasy films that merged life and dream, before his business tragically collapsed and he disappeared into obscurity.The Observer
H/t to
Sacha Baron Cohen for his most excellent part in Hugo.
MY PICK
"The Iron Lady"
In "The Iron Lady" director Phyllida Lloyd and screenwriter Abi Morgan submit Margaret Thatcher to the "Citizen Kane" treatment, though the approach now seems conventional although appropriate for the ultra Right Wing Thatcher, the British bookend to Ronald Reagan who also slipped into advanced senile dementia which is where this film begins. Make no mistake, I am a great critic of Ms. Thatcher and Reagan as well for fortifying the battle lines drawn up against common working people vs. the very rich and entitled. She deserves this kind of bitter sweet remembrance even if neither deserved the torment and agony of advanced decrepitude, but one only gets a chance to take in the kind of astounding portrayal that only an actress like Meryl Streep might be capable of delivering on very rare occassions.
Aside from an incredible performance from Ms Streep, the film cinematically stands on its own in flashback presentations as well as documenting the struggle that any person afflicted with such a heart wrenching disorder must endure.
Without going on at great lengths let me just say that remembering Thatcher (and Reagan) may be more appropriate and to the times of the current day politicing being done by the GOP plutocrats trying to sell the same revised darling to Americans in the form of the out of touch, dual Cadillac drivin' Romneys.
"The Iron Lady" isn't even up for Best Picture even though Streep is nominated for Best Actress for her role. Still even in a field of ten very strong contenders for Best Picture, this is one film with staying power for the generations. It's really a cinematic take on karma for the powerful elite and much more to the point than "The Artist" or "Hugo" for my nickel's worth today.
"Facts are stupid things." Ronald Reagan at the 1988 Republican National Convention.
End Credits / Closing Remarks:
Given that the greater part of our site's purpose here on the Street of Prophets is to provide a place where people who might describe themselves as faithful progressives can come together to explore not only faith but the larger questions that revolve around it and our hopes of impacting the world in a positive, progressive way, I am providing these sometime weekly film reviews (whenever). I thought that submitting reviews of controversial or off-the-beaten-track films that often nudge this kind of thought and discussion might be a plus. I'll be offering this each week on Fridays (as the Spirit moves me) and would happily entertain recommendations for future reviews. Feel free to post comments about the films reviewed here today as well as your own recommendations of films you feel may fall along these lines.
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My religion is to seek for truth in life and for life in truth, even knowing that I shall not find them while I live. Miguel de Unamuno