Journey by Frame

You can find my review of Martin Scorsese’s latest film Hugo here (for Spectrum Culture). An excerpt:

Delmore Schwartz’s short story “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” depicts a young man’s dream of entering a movie theater, sitting down to watch the film and realizing that he’s seeing footage of his parents’ courtship. Schwartz treats this premise pessimistically–at one point, the man attempts to warn the couple that it’s not too late for them to stop, even though this would of course prevent him from ever being born–but Schwartz’s central idea, being present at and witnessing one’s own origins, is the idea at the heart of Martin Scorsese’s latest film Hugo, considered in a more wide-eyed and hopeful manner. Scorsese is a child of the cinema par excellence, and his film imagines this origination, showing moments from cinema’s era and place of birth and examining what might be called the moment of his spiritual conception.