'HUGO' - A heartwarming history

It's been a while since I last posted, so I thought i'd start slowly with a film review of Martin Scorsese's Oscar winning production, Hugo.
I know it may be a year overdue with the film being released early December last year, but the trailer simply caught my eye, and so it began...

First impressions from the trailer were that it was to be a fairly lighthearted film, following the life of young Hugo Cabret, a boy who lived in the walls of a train station in 1930s Paris. However, within the first half an hour of the movie, I could tell it went a lot deeper than a conventional family adventure film, burrowing deep into human emotions, questioning life itself.
The film explores some of the core meanings of life, with the young boy as the lost soul after his father's tragic death. Although parts were enlightened by the terrific Sacha Baron Cohen there still appeared to be a very clear underlying message throughout the entire picture. One of my favourite quotes from the film is:

"I'd imagine the whole world was one big machine. And machines never come with any extra parts y'know, they always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured if the whole world was one big machine, I couldn't be an extra part, I had to be here for some reason"

I find this quote fascinating, as it captures the entire essence of the film. The search for the message Hugo's father had left behind, following the development of Film and Magic through the 1930s but he had already found the message, everyone is here for a reason.
If you're after a happily-ever-after straight-forward family film, then this isn't what you're looking for. But if you want to follow this twists and turns of a young boy's life, feeling the emotion go on an adventure, explore, discover, then you're most definitely in the right place.