Hugo

In 1939, a movie called The Wizard of Oz debuted to critical acclaim and middling box office success. Though the film would later become a classic, it initially failed to offset MGM’s investment, which had been extravagant thanks to Oz’s extensive, high-quality use of color. At the time, color was looked down upon by many aesthetes, disorienting to many audience members, and reserved only for the largest productions with the broadest audiences. Many dismissed the new element as a fad, or shunned it for being yet another way for the industry to make more money, or charged it with the unforgivable crime of artistically compromising the entire medium. Sound familiar?

Today, of course, color is a given, whereas black and white films are hardly ever produced and even more infrequently missed. But at first, color films had to make a case for their departure from the norm, and find a way to make something new and unfamiliar both pleasant and engaging for the moviegoers. These efforts were only just beginning to succeed in 1939, when the Academy included color cinematography as a category for award consideration. Over seventy years later, 3D films face the same challenge, and with Hugo, Martin Scorsese has endeavored to face that challenge head on.

Scorsese has a major leg up on his contemporaries, because he’s not only one of the medium’s greatest directors, he’s also one of its greatest scholars, and he’s learned a thing or two from history, so he knows that the keys to a successful 3D film in our time are much the same as those for a successful color film in Judy Garland’s. First thing’s first. A new and unfamiliar form must be tempered to some degree by familiar material and content. The imperative of crafting something as broadly appealing as The Wizard of Oz was obviously not lost on Scorsese. Hugo is a significant departure from his tone and subject matter and it is no coincidence that his first 3D film is also his first family film. In addition, the cast has been carefully chosen to attract audience members from every corner: Sasha Baron Cohen for the boys; Jude Law for the girls; Ben Kingsley for the cinephiles; and little kids for little kids.

Of course, Scorsese also knows that 3D movies must first and foremost be good movies. Without digressing into a tiresome tangent about what exactly “goodness” for a movie entails, I can confidently say of Hugo (and, of course, Oz) that its story engages, its characters endear, it is visually appealing, and I genuinely cared about the characters--not that we expect anything less from the director of Raging Bull. And in spite of the absence of violence, sex, and a prodigious stream of curse words, the film actually shares much in common with the director’s body of work. We have an outsider main character, and a plot that inevitably brings him into contact with a society that he has always both disdained and envied. We have an elegant moving camera, an editing style that creates energy through contrast. And inevitably we have a plethora of loving, insightful references to both specific films and the medium as a whole.

This brings us to the clearest evidence of Scorsese’s deep understanding of how audiences react to a new element like 3D and the necessity of addressing that element directly. We have not yet reached the point where 3D is taken for granted. Any time you watch a 3D movie, you are constantly aware of its presence, its novelty. Right now, 3D is like a friend’s body odor--when he first sits next to you, the smell is constantly present in your interaction. However, manage to sit with him long enough and your nose will adjust. Eventually, once we’ve watched enough 3D, it will fall into the background, as color did for audiences of the 20th century. In the meantime, however, there is nothing more unpleasant than being subjected to an odor that you cannot remark on. It is much better if your friend has just come from a work out and acknowledges his stench--if you have to pretend not to notice the smell, it becomes all the more distracting. Directors have to find a way to consciously draw our attention to the presence of the unfamiliar element of 3D, so that we can feel more comfortable with feeling uncomfortable--and if they can find a way to show us that the peculiar sensation we’ve been subjected to is actually not discomfort but pleasure, so much the better. Oz solved this problem with self-conscious formal play in switching from the black and white of Kansas to the beautiful color of Oz--implicitly asking, “Now wouldn’t you rather be in the dazzling color world, with talking lions and magic and midgets, than the mundane black and white one, with mean neighbors and a boring little farm?” Scorsese’s approach is more direct in that he actually puts 2D movies into his 3D film. But instead of marking a contrast between the two, he uses the 3D and to aid in glorifying films of the past. This strategy isn’t just an effective way to help us engage with the new technology, it’s also a very savvy one, because it’s won over the hearts of the same snooty film who would otherwise decry 3D.

In my mind, there’s no doubt that 3D will become a universally accepted aspect of cinema. Like color, or sound, or wide-screen, audiences will adjust and protests against the “blasphemy” and the discomfort will disappear as more and more great 3D films appear. Scorsese has taken one of the first, important steps in this direction. Let’s hope others follow his lead sooner rather than later.

                                             Gus Spelman