Z/Web

I knew very little about this going into it as the trailers don’t reveal much. That’s fine, because it’s a hard story to explain without ruining it. All I knew was that it was about an orphan boy in a Paris train station in the 1930s and there something about a robot his father built. Well, it turned out his clockmaker father didn’t build the robot — only found it and repaired it — and it’s not a robot at all, but merely an automaton. Though the trailers made this feel like a story about magic, there is no magic here as everything is very grounded in reality. I liked that. The magic is in the story and the emotions of the characters, not in the events.

That story starts out as a troubled boy’s journey to discover a message from his late father and turns into a quest to help another human being. That, in turn, heals the boy. It is a wonderful, wonderful story.

That quest takes him and his friend back to the dawn of cinema, where we experience the wonder and magic of silent film. This is brilliantly done as we experience both wistful nostalgia and learn to appreciate the true miracle of the first moving pictures.

The ending is truly heartwarming, but the journey to get there is an amazing experience. This is a film and story all about the visuals, from intricate clockworks and the mechanical man to the grand Paris train station filled with dozens of fascinating characters.

Perhaps my favorite aspect of the film were all the tiny side stories, the little love story between the fat man whose advanced are continually foiled by his love’s little yappy dog, and the seemingly evil crippled inspector too shy to meet the attractive flower seller. These stories take just seconds here and there throughout the film but they add such heart and context to the story, grounding everything in humanity, and yet enveloping the entire setting in a cloak of magic.

My vote for must-see film of the holidays. If you can only see one film this season, make it this one. A magical film the whole family will enjoy.