Hugo (2011)
The cinema year came to a magnificent crescendo with two films filled with what the world needs now. Hugo and The Mill and the Cross have little in common on the surface other than their quality; look deeper and you may find love-filled, theologically profound, hopeful invitations to live better.
In The Mill and the Cross, that dehumanization appears in rich closeup, for this film takes place inside a painting, the Flemish Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel's astonishing re-imagining of Jesus' walk to the cross to a 17th century European valley. Filled with indelible images of brokenness and love, The Mill and the Cross constitutes a religious icon. Two scenes continue to reverberate, long after watching: the hopelessness of a woman observing her "heretic" husband's execution, in which she does nothing but weep because she lives at a time when tyranny is unquestioned; and the clumsy peasant dance that writer-director Lech Majewski uses to stand in for the resurrection, evoking the hope that artists such as Bruegel demand of us, to recognize that the privilege of being alive is worthy of something better than the way we often treat it.
A similar eschatological heart beats in Martin Scorsese's amazing film version of Brian Selznick's book The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Everything about Hugo reflects awe: of cinema, of childhood, of creativity, of community. We're seeing the world from the perspective of a boy who has suffered great losses, and is living in the recesses of a Parisian train station ceiling, keeping the clocks running. He meets a toy seller, mysterious and crotchety, who may hold the key—literally—to Hugo's healing. It's a truly magical journey that manages to reflect on war trauma, great food, falling in love, regret, passion, serving the common good, and the power of art to elevate human consciousness. It ends with a vision of heaven on earth envisaged as the idea of celebrating reconciliation with friends, food, and drink. Hugo is a magnificent vision of what we all want most, and a perfect way to end a year in which hope seemed poised for a comeback.