Which one? I've mastered three

[sovay]

Hugo (2011) is not the best movie I have ever seen about movies, but it may be the most loving. There are almost no villains in it, except maybe Time, which is also a magician. Everyone in it turns out to be real.

(Almost everything in it is real. Hugo is invented; the automaton he discovers is not.)

Today was better than yesterday.

Comments

[sovay]

On second reading I understand what you mean: that the people and things and places mentioned in the movie have real-life antecedents (yes?)

Well, I meant by the first line that the characters in it are real, even if at first they look like the face cards of children's literature. They have histories. They're complicated. They turn out to be people.

But almost everything in the movie does have a real-life antecedent, which I didn't realize when I was watching it—I thought it was a kind of wishful alternate history. The core story is factual. That knowledge only adds grace.

But at first I thought it meant that everything that seems a dream or a wish or an illusion in the movie ends up being real--within the movie. That gave me a sudden sense of joy.

Actually, it's kind of true.