Welcome to Marwen

Dir: Robert Zemeckis

2018

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There’s an age old saying that I think Robert Zemeckis should take note of: “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”. It took him two films (A Christmas Carol and The Polar Express) to understand that semi-realistic animation doesn’t look very good and perhaps following The Walk and Welcome to Marwen, he’ll think twice about dramatizing anymore documentaries. Seriously though, why would you dramatize a documentary? Documentaries are real, why would you take one and fictionalize it, it doesn’t make any sense. I enjoyed Jeff Malmberg's 2010 documentary Marwencol and I think I learned about as much about Mark Hogancamp as I needed to and indeed as much as he wanted people to know. I’d love to know what on earth made Zemeckis think about such a project that was never, ever going to become a success. In the 2010 documentary we are introduced to Mark Hogancamp just before an exhibition of his work. In 2000, Mark 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. Unable to afford therapy, he created his own by building a 1/6-scale World War II–era Belgian town in his garden and populating it with dolls representing himself, his friends, and even his attackers. He calls that town Marwencol, blending the names Mark, Wendy, and Colleen. He was initially discovered by photographer David Naugle, who documented and shared his story with Esopus magazine which then lead to Jeff Malmberg's documentary. It was a fascinating and heartwarming look at one man’s self therapy with loads of cool models and photos. A happy story. It didn’t need the Hollywood/Zemeckis/fantasy treatment. However, there is something so odd about it, that I actually quite enjoyed it. Steve Carell plays Mark Hogancamp and in the opening shot we see Carell as Hogancamp as one of his own dolls flying a World War II warplane that has been hit by enemy fire and is about to crash land.The pilot's shoes are burned in the landing but he manages to find a pair of red high-heals, which he wears instead. The pilot is confronted by doll-like German soldiers, who taunt him for wearing women's shoes. The Germans threaten to emasculate him, but are killed by a group of doll-like women who come to the pilot's rescue and protect him. The scenario is of course part of an elaborate fantasy created by Mark Hogancamp, using modified fashion dolls in a model village named Marwen (originally called Marwencol but for some reason Zemeckis dropped the col). Mark imagines that the dolls are alive and photographs his fantasies to help him cope with acute memory loss and post-traumatic stress disorder from a brutal attack he suffered some time earlier, when he drunkenly told a group of white supremacists about his fetish for wearing women's shoes. The dolls correspond to people that he knows in real life: himself as "Cap'n Hogie", the pilot; various female friends as his protectors; and his attackers as German Nazi soldiers. A green-haired doll named Deja Thoris is a Belgian Witch who prevents Cap'n Hogie from becoming too close with any woman. Mark finally agrees to appear in court to deliver a victim impact statement after much coaxing from his attorney and friends, but upon seeing his attackers, he imagines them as Nazi soldiers shooting at him, and becomes terrified and flees, causing the judge to postpone the hearing. Mark falls in love with a woman named Nicol who has just moved in across the street, whom he has added to his fantasy. Mark imagines that the doll Nicol is in love with Cap'n Hogie, and that they get married. In real life, Mark proposes marriage to Nicol, who tells him she wishes to remain only friends. Mark is distraught and contemplates suicide. In his fantasies, Nicol is shot by a Nazi, who in turn is killed by Cap'n Hogie but brought back to life, along with other Nazi soldiers, by Deja Thoris. Cap'n Hogie realizes that Deja Thoris is a Nazi spy, and Mark realizes that the pills that he thought were helping him were actually hurting him. Mark pours the pills down the sink and vows to break his addiction to them. Mark attends the rescheduled sentencing hearing and delivers his statement. That evening Mark attends the exhibition of his work and makes a date with his friend Roberta, who is a sales clerk at the hobby store where he is a frequent customer. The film ends with a photograph of the real Mark Hogancamp, who has a successful career as a photographer. It’s odd and rather pointless given that the documentary already exists. However, I quite liked how the dolls looked. It’s a weird quirky idea – far weirder than the real story – that I can’t deny I wasn’t drawn to. I think I quite liked the look of the dolls too and I thought Steve Carell was great too, even though he’s nothing like the real Mark Hogancamp. Hogancamp must have agreed to it, so maybe this was an extension of one of his fantasies. In all honesty, if Hogancamp liked it, then I like it, as any extension of his world is a good thing. I’m not sure why Hogancamp’s attackers had to be white supremacists as they weren’t in real life, if anything they were homophobic. In a film that boldly explores cross dressing I don’t know why the bad guys had to be so extreme, when average people can be bad too. Sure, Hogancamp likens them to Nazis in his WW2 fantasy world but in the real world they were guys in a bar and not part of an organised hate group. I am happy that they didn’t shy away from Hogancamp’s love of women’s shoes though. It could be why the film didn’t do so well, which makes me sad, it is either that or the doll people anyway. Like I’ve said, I didn’t hate it, I was draw to its oddness, but it didn’t need to exist, I’m just quite glad it does, especially as I wasn’t the one who paid for it and lost all my money. I thought it was a little tacky inserting so many nods to his own films though, from Back to the Future to Allied, Zemeckis had to remind us that it was his film above all else.