As Martin Scorsese turns his hand from mob violence to family adventure with Hugo, James argues that more directors should make PG-rated movies…
Martin Scorsese's cameo appearance as a babbling bushy-eyebrowed blowfish in Shark Tale is the highlight of a damp squib of a movie. It's the best thing about a flick that's pretty unlikable in spite of its colourful sea world setting and multitudinous movie references. The legendary director's presence was the only aspect that really moved me and made me laugh.
It's probably because Scorsese is a funny guy (not funny like a clown) and an amiable and highly lovable good fella with a brilliant New York accent. I see images of the 69-year-old auteur all effervescent with his great enthusiasm and film knowledge radiating through marvellous brows and big specs and I just want to adopt him as my surrogate cineaste grandpa.
The more Marty the better, I say. It was a shame, therefore, coming away from Shark Tale thinking that having his likeness digitally rendered onto an anthropomorphic sea squab named Sykes was going to be as good as it got for the director in terms of family-friendly material.
Scorsese, after all, makes very adult films about mobsters, mean streets and the American Dream's dark underbelly that drives semi-decent people to derangement, distress or detached alienation. If he's not doing that, he's crafting documentaries about the blues or aging rockers.
To lift terminology from Shutter Island, he's what you'd call a 'man of violence', engaged in making beautiful cinema built on mature themes, exploring the hard edges of humanity. Conventional wisdom keeps kids away from these areas and in safer zones - places where the biggest threats come in the form of a CGI animated shark.
It was a nice surprise, then, to hear that Scorsese was making a feature-length film adaptation of children's fantasy book The Invention Of Hugo Cabret by writer-illustrator Brian Selznick. Hugo has now hit screens in fully cinematic format, available in 3D and ideally timed as the Christmas season arrives, when it can thrive in a festive atmosphere thick with childhood wonder and excitement.
I can picture scenes of little street urchins queuing outside local theatres through full force blizzards, huddling in to see a heartfelt picture set in a 1930s Parisian train station. Several hours later they emerge into the frosty night all aglow proclaiming "God bless us, every one!" Then the Moon - its face is Martin Scorsese's - beams down, brightens the Northern Hemisphere and Christmas cheer is successfully dispersed, all the angels get their wings and bells ring out for blockbuster December joy.
Santa Claus (he's really Tim Allen) is a disappointment, and isn't going to deliver the goods and salvage a happy holiday out of these dire times. He has no imagination and simply tosses Transformers action figures at kids who need real emotional and intellectual sustenance, not lame merchandise and obese men designed by Coca Cola Company marketers. Lucky for us, then, that Scorsese has saved Christmas 2011.
This magical seasonal sweetness is a world away from memories of Robert De Niro covered in blood or beating up a prison wall, or Joe Pesci sticking some poor schmuck's head in a vice. In truth, though, to think of the director purely along those lines as solely a purveyor of violence does him a tremendous disservice.
Scorsese is the master of modern American cinema, and for over 40 years he's been making bold, distinct features of style and nuance that last as entertaining spectacles, works of art and meditations on real people and particular cultures (usually the urban ethnic American experience, but not always so). He deftly takes the flourishes of the classic European cinema he worships and crafts careful, immersive and powerful pictures of a high standard every single time.
Even when he’s revisiting familiar territory - making genre films, remakes like Cape Fear and The Departed, or a sequel to The Hustler in the shape of The Color Of Money - there's still a sense of freshness, and he carries through his own vision. Scorsese is so well versed in cinema history and his love for it is infectious, but he's no hack. He takes his encyclopaedic understanding of the medium and applies it to his own individual ends without it ever feeling lazily derivative or dull. This is the mark of a true artist, and I don't think it's pretentious, gushy or erroneous to label him as one of world's greatest living creators.
I'm all stoked up for Hugo, then, not just for myself so I can revel in another opus from the master, but so wider audiences can as well. Those children emerging into the frost will not just have enjoyed a fantastical adventure film but will also, thanks to Marty the Saviour of Christmas, have been introduced to motion picture pioneer of George Méliès - played by Ben Kingsley - as well as Scorsese himself.
Through the frames of a family movie, Marty is sowing the seeds of cinematic wonder in fertile minds and luring them towards the vast magic of the movies.
He's always been a director who deals in messages (like "stop with those f-ing drugs. They're making your mind into mush"), but the education on offer here goes beyond Roman Catholic morality. With Hugo, Scorsese is raising the audience's attention to the early days of cinema, hopefully subtly persuading people to open their minds to the silent glories of days long gone by.
Even if that doesn't happen, if a few more youngsters latch on to Scorsese's name and seek out his masterworks (The King Of Comedy, or The Aviator, if Taxi Driver is too hardcore) then Hugo has succeeded.
Seeing Marty venture into territory where his directorial mastery can be appreciated by wider audiences, I reckon other auteurs should embrace family-friendly material.
There’s delightfully daft potential here, with David Fincher making Seven for seven-year-olds perhaps, Quentin Tarantino creating frenetic cartoon capers (Reservoir Puppies) or Park Chan-wook producing Sympathy For Baby Vengeance.
Seriously, though, I do truly believe that the globe’s greatest filmmakers should take a shot at family films both as a creative challenge, an attempt to raise their profile and to keep the movie marketplace interesting.
With Hugo, Martin Scorsese is keeping things interesting and, as I said before, may have saved Christmas. This year you can take a festive family trip to the cinema and enjoy something crafted by a sublime, loving master rather than the empty cinematic equivalent of egg noodles and ketchup. (Something like Shark Tale or Alvin And The Chipmunks: Chip-Wrecked. Bah humbug, indeed.)
Thanks, Marty, and God bless us, every one.
James' previous column can be found here. You can reach James on his Twitter feed here, see his film cartoons here and more sketches here. Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here. And be our Facebook chum here.