Hugo paid a beautiful tribute to the very idea of film, the story of a young boy inspiring an aging artist to reinvest himself into his life’s work of telling stories on the big screen. So it’s only appropriate that the Academy should recognize and pay a beautiful tribute to
Hugo…and it sure did, regaling
Hugo with five Oscars at the
84th Annual Academy Awards.
Martin Scorsese’s love-letter to the movies received awards in the following categories:
Best Visual Effects,
Best Sound Editing,
Best Sound Mixing,
Best Art Direction and
Best Cinematography.
The
Hugo-mania that overtook the first half of the Awards got many watchers in the spirit of the film, possibly even convincing a few that
Hugo could take some of the major awards for which it was in contention, including Best Director and Best Picture. However, another film celebrating classic cinema,
The Artist, found itself the victor at the end of the night.
The Artist grabbed awards in the Best Score, Best Director (Michel Hazanavicius), Best Actor (Jean Dujardin) and
Best Picture categories. Amazingly,
The Artist wining Best Picture makes it the first silent film to win the top honor since
Wings, the only other such winner, in the Academy's inaugural year of 1927.
Although Hugo’s magical quality has not gone unnoticed, it is somewhat of a surprise that the film—overshadowed in Oscars talk by some of its fellow Best Picture nominees—won so much attention at the ceremony. But if you think about it, it sure does make sense that the film took so many wins. And on that same token, The Artist's victories makes sense as well. The Oscars are all about celebrating the movies. So movies that are about celebrating movies? Sounds like a pretty clear win.