Both the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret and the Martin Scorsese film Hugo have their thematic roots in escapism - reality is represented through the dark, smoky 1930 Paris train station, and illusion is found in the films of Georges Melies. Hugo, in both works, finds wonder with his father in the movies; in the film, Hugo states that films were "our special placewhere we could go andwe didn't miss my mum so much." With this line, he reveals one of the fundamental purposes that film provides for audiences; it allows them to forget their problems. For both Hugo and Melies, the act of making or watching movies allows them to forget their tragedies; Hugo can forget about his mother's death (and later his father's), while Melies escaped into a world where his illusions were more real than ever before, applying his old magic tricks to film to make the first special effects.
Technology is the key to this escapism, both in the technology of film and of magic. Both Hugo and Melies bury themselves in technology, between the clocks of the train station and the toys in Melies' toy shop. This technology both frees and burdens them; it binds them to a modern world that rips them from their happier pasts (Hugo's past with his loving father, and Melies' happy film career before World War I killed the public interest in his films). To that end, both film and upcoming modern technology offers them a quiet solace as they tinker away in their own respective journeys - it is only when they find each other that they can cement a human connection to the modern world by acting as a surrogate father and son.
