Marwencol

Dir: Jeff Malmberg

2010

****

Marwencol is a portmanteau of the names Mark, Wendy and Colleen and is the name of a model town created by Mark Hogancamp. Hogancamp was attacked outside of a bar by five men who beat him nearly to death after he told them he was a cross-dresser. After nine days in a coma and 40 days in the hospital, Hogancamp was discharged with brain damage that left him little memory of his previous life. He recovered but was left with severe memory loss and brain damage. He couldn't afford therapy, so he made a model town based on WW2 era Belgium instead which he believes helps him with his condition. There isn't really much else to Mark Hogancamp's story after the first ten minutes of Marwencol but that said, something interesting always seems to happen just before you start to loose interest. I don't want to spoil it but the last 'revelation' is treated as much more of a big deal than it really is when the overall mood of the documentary was fine without needing to be controversial. I liked this film for the models to be honest, I love the idea and I thought the photos were brilliant. Hogancamp was initially discovered by photographer David Naugle, who documented and shared his story with Esopus magazine. This lead to an exhibition of Hogancamp's work which is covered in the documentary. I think the best moments for me were not the ones Jeff Malmberg had intended to be and I do hope that not too much was lost in the editing room. I really liked his best friends interviews and he summed up the situation brilliantly when he said some guy had told him that 'I'm not interested in fake war, I want to see real war and he answered 'This is a real war man''. He should have had far more screen time in my opinion. It's something of a limited fly-on-the-wall documentary really as Hogancamp clearly isn't that keen on talking about himself and the dolls and models speak for themselves. There is clearly more to it than meets the eye but I don't think I want to know more about Hogancamp than he is willing to tell. In many respects it should really work but somehow it does, although it does suffer from a certain documentary structure cliche that is becoming a little too familiar of late, especially in American documentaries, but overall an informative, original and somewhat hypnotic story.