Reflections on Sincerity
There’s a movie that I don’t understand the reason for being regarded as not only good but a masterpiece. There are several movies I disagree with wider audiences about, and there are many people who have similar disagreeing views of movies I share the perspective of wider audiences. There are reasons I and others dislike a movie—objective quality and personal taste being some—but this movie in particular I’ve been thinking about has something in its core that makes it bad. But it’s regarded as great. How? I think the answer to that question resides in another question: how does propaganda appeal to so many people?
propaganda
noun
1. information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.
Well, by its nature propaganda is (typically) biased, and many people have biases, so people who share the particular biases of the propaganda will largely constitute the many who the propaganda appeals to. So, that’s an answer. But people are also fairly good at recognizing sincerity, so the appeal of propaganda should be mitigated… shouldn’t it? Maybe, maybe not. I know some who can parse the accuracies of propaganda while still recognizing its biases, and others who habitually cherry-pick and myopically see nothing beyond the biases of propaganda. On the flipside, I know some who see false positives in straightforward information, incorrectly calling it insincere or propaganda—they are also typically the prior sentence’s latter people. On the subject of this movie, I believe it to be insincere in addition to it being all around not good. What is this movie? Why, it’s none other than Martin Scorsese’s 2011 movie Hugo.
Why am I pontificating about this random film more than a decade after it’s come out? Because shut up. I have my general critiques with the film having poor pacing, bad acting, and a disjointed and unengaging plot, but more than that it doesn’t feel sincere. It feels… self-aggrandizing. It’s like the theme/message superseded the story and the story is more of an afterthought and vehicle through which the theme sticks out its dainty, gloved hand and languidly motions for onlookers to appraise and swoon at. Yes, movies are great. I love movies. That doesn’t mean I like movies that are full of themselves. Things like that are self-serving and feel insincere or manipulative the same way propaganda does. But, given the wide praise this movie has gotten, the manipulation works.
This isn’t to say people can’t like Hugo for any other reason than being fools to manipulation. In essence, stories themselves more or less are exercises in manipulation. It’s just that Hugo’s story sucks. Yeah, I said it. This may just be my opinion, but my opinion’s also right. It may have had flashy visuals, effects, and editing, big name actors, and a big name director, and those may have been the reasons Hugo is so well-regarded. I do wonder whether the movie would have been as liked if done by a different director (all else remaining the same). As it is, I feel much like the confused child in the crowd looking at the emperor in his procession without his clothes.
This also isn’t to say that Hugo is completely insincere. There certainly had to have been sincerity behind its craft and making. Sincerity can be highly subjective. What is a sincere conveying of information for one may be abject lying to another. I think there’s a solid argument for Hugo lacking sincerity, at least to the effect of not doing right by the story while doing right by its theme. And I can hardly argue Martin Scorsese isn’t sincere about that theme—he’s been somewhat vocal about what “true cinema” is, which is fair enough since he acknowledges it as his opinion. I even agree with him on this opinion, at least to a degree. But when it comes to Hugo I see that sort of sincerity morphed and twisted into a sincere insincerity about… well, cinema. And I guess that’s kind of ironic?
Taking a quote from him on cinema: “Today…there are some in the business with absolute indifference to the very question of art and an attitude toward the history of cinema that is both dismissive and proprietary — a lethal combination.” Word. I agree. Though I sort of see a connection between his reference to the history of cinema and how it’s portrayed as a central theme in Hugo. It’s portrayed, at best, with great fondness and, at worst, with maudlin obsession. In both cases it can be sincere, but both cases also involve significant if not excessive dedication to a love of cinema. I’d argue, with that bias of passion and affection for historical cinema as the theme being proffered, Hugo is alike propaganda. It doesn’t do well in having likable characters or an entertaining story, but it does exceptionally well in pushing the wonder of cinema.
Well, that’s about all I have to say about Hugo. I find it interesting that it is considered by critics as brilliant while being a box office bomb—though it did have a crazy budget to make up for and it had to compete with Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 in its release (kek). I also find it interesting how forgettable it is. I mean, here I am talking about it a decade later, but it’s only memorable to me because I disagree significantly with its favorability with critics—and I’m a weirdo. That it’s strange to talk about nowadays indicates to some degree that Hugo wasn’t as sincerely great as critics said.
sincerity
noun
the quality of being free from pretense, deceit, or hypocrisy.
