Martin Scorsese
Hugo Cabret

"I like to imagine that the world is one big machine. You know, machines don’t have any extra parts. They have exactly the number and type of parts they need. So I think if the world is a big machine, I must be here for some reason. And so must you!"

The world as a clock. Time flows relentlessly, but it's as if it's been frozen at the Paris station. Characters with their lives, always the same, move like gears in a machine, until little Hugo Cabret brings a delicate chaos into everyone's lives. To change his own.

Scorsese, from the novel by Brian Selznick, paints an adventure of rare delicacy, addressing themes like the loss of a parent and loneliness through the naive and pure eyes of a child.  

The world acquires new images, new dreamlike languages: reality merges into the fantastic universe of the special effects pioneer, Georges Méliès (Ben Kingsley).

The search for a purpose, so as not to die.

To not extinguish.

"If you lose your purpose, it's like you're broken".

The key to it all is heart-shaped. Inserting "a heart" into an automaton, so it can function again and show the way to little Hugo. Giving a bit of life to a machine to mend oneself, one's world, one's hopes.

Méliès' works, modernized and colored, acquire a stunning visual power.

And that rocket-bullet that ends in the eye of the moon, remains one of the most beautiful images ever conceived.

... And I'm not just talking about cinema.