The protagonist in the movie Hugo offers valuable insight into the primal motivation at the core of every soul.  Hugo, an orphan in Paris, engages in a persistent – almost obsessive – endeavor to repair an automaton, which his father worked on before dying during Hugo’s childhood. Unknown to the audience for much of the movie, Hugo’s project is driven by the hope of discovering a message from his late father to him, hidden within the machine.

Hugo never discloses specifically what he hopes that message will be, but one only can assume that the words he seeks are the very ones every person wants to hear from his or her parents.

Hugo’s sense of estrangement and hope for some kind of connection with his distant father mirrors the universal impulse of the human heart. At the same time, it also resembles a prevalent ailment in present-day teen culture…..