Review: Welcome to Marwen
Considering the true story on which it is based, Welcome to Marwen should be a compelling work. Yet, for all its technical wizardry, the film is dominated by deficiencies, which are often hard to pinpoint but which conspire to prevent Mark Hogancamp's life from being the touching, eccentric, and inspiring tale that was first captured in Jeff Malmberg's 2010 documentary, Marwencol.
In 2000, Hogancamp was beaten to within an inch of his life after he drunkenly told five guys at a bar that he liked wearing women's shoes. Comatose for nine days, he survived but most of his adult memories were erased. He had to relearn basic life skills. Since his injuries resulted in hand tremors that didn't allow him to return to his former passion of drawing, Hogancamp turned to photography. He built a scale-model World War II-era Belgian village in his backyard. Christened Marwen, it was populated by dolls and action figures, most of which were based on the people around him. He would have the Marwenites act out various melodramas, usually involving his alter-ego, American Air Force Captain Hogie and the five women who help him fight the Nazis, and photograph the scenes. His photographs, done in the style of documentary war stills, would eventually bring him recognition in the art world.
That director Robert Zemeckis would be drawn to the story is no surprise for it affords him another opportunity to do what he does best, which is to blend live action and animation. From that point of view, Welcome to Marwen is a success, both technically and thematically. For Hogancamp, Marwen wasn't wholly an imagined place, it was a way for him to cope with his trauma and also to process moments both major and minor. The line between what's real and what's imagined is blurred and Zemeckis mirrors this in the transitions between Hogancamp's real life and the goings-on in Marwen. Not surprisingly, he seems most engaged during the Marwen scenes, which pay homage to films such as Inglourious Basterds and Vertigo and which possess a flair that's sorely lacking in the non-Marwen scenes.
Yet even the most enjoyable Marwen moment feels stunted and rudderless in some way, and one wonders if the film might have benefited from a more linear telling and a less earnest tone. This is tricky fare, to be sure, but the earnestness tips into the saccharine and, whatever complexities Hogancamp's tale possessed, are smoothed over in favour of a feel-good fable. Even the inherent All-American Everyman nobility of Steve Carell, who plays Hogancamp and Hogie, becomes curdled in quicksand of the film's cheap sentimentalism.
Welcome to Marwen
Directed by: Robert Zemeckis
Written by: Caroline Thompson, Robert Zemeckis
Starring: Steve Carell, Leslie Mann, Diane Kruger, Merritt Weaver, Janelle Monae, Eiza González, Gwendoline Christie, Leslie Zemeckis, Neil Jackson
