Welcome to Marwen

The Island of Misfit Toys
or
The Wartime-Love-Child of G.I.Joe and Malibu Barbie

The story of Mark Hogancamp would be an interesting one, if it wasn't so goddamned tragic. An illustrator of some note, Hogancamp was also a blackout drunk who would have surely come to a bad end eventually...if he hadn't been savagely beaten by a bunch of punks at his favorite watering hole and left for dead. Found in the street in a coma by a bar worker, his injuries included severe head trauma and limited motor skills that only strenuous rehab allowed him to walk again. When he emerged from treatment, he was a changed man, completely—he could walk but he couldn't draw, his drinking urges were gone, and all of his memories were completely erased. All he remembered of the attack is the word "queer" (he had mentioned that he liked to wear women's shoes) and Tammy Wynette singing "Stand By Your Man" on the jukebox. 

And he had a crippling case of PTSD, that forced him to rarely venture away from his house.

He walled himself there, afraid to venture out unless it was on the safest of journeys—to the bar (where he worked odd jobs) and to the local hobby store, mostly. But, his creative urges never completely submerged. He couldn't draw anymore; he could barely sign his name. Instead, he began to make photographs—creating his own little world of World War II images, set in the mythical Belgian town of Marwen—"Mar" for his name and "Wen" for the bar-maid, Wendy, who found him broken in the street that night and saved his life.

Hogancamp's images are odd and powerful, moving between realism and fantasy—the details so scrupulous, the vehicles so weathered, that I've seen some passed around as actual war photographs on the internet* (because social media is so TRUTHFUL!**) with the protagonist—a flyer named Captain Hoagie who crashes into the town of Marwen, inhabited by strong, capable women who protect it, with the lone exception of Marwen's witch, the evil Dejah Thoris,*** as well as the parade of Nazi's who torment Hoagie, that he be saved by Marwen's women. Hogancamp's story was told in a 2010 documentary Marwencol, which made the rounds and garnered enough attention for Hogancamp's "art installation" that it threatens to interfere with his disability checks on which he depends.

Hogancamp's story (external and internal) is the basis of the new project of Robert Zemeckis, the director for whom reality never seems good enough, expanding his stories with extensive special effects, even choosing to abandon reality completely with films depending completely on motion capture, even extending to the lead performances of its expensive stars.

He starts out Welcome to Marwen, not by introducing Hogancamp (played in the film by Steve Carell, but by introducing his inner world as we watch Captain Hogie on a bombing raid high above Belgium. Pretty soon, the air is filled with flak and Hogie's plane is hit and starts losing control. As the wings catch fire, Hogie struggles to regain control and ultimately crashes in a shallow river. When he bails out, his shoes are on fire ("Goddamn flammable Army-issue boots!"), and after a jump in the mud puts it out, a peeling off of the soles reveals the his feet are segmented...like a doll's.

Hogie finds an overturned vehicle as he makes his way down a Belgian road. Inside the vehicle is a suitcase filled with "frilly under-things." And a pair of high heeled pumps. He puts them on and is satisfied ("Not bad. Not bad at all."). But, confronted by a group of Nazi officers, they get the drop on him and begin to mock him for wearing high-heels. They attack him, leaving a nasty scar across his face, but before they can kill him, five women pop up out of the grass, firing rifles riddling the Germans, who fall to the ground in frozen doll-like poses that defy gravity.

[CLICK] The plasticene look of the figures are revealed to be dolls being photographed by Mark with an old Pentax camera, perpetually smoking a Pall-Mall, talking to his figures, adjusting, making still-lives of the story in his head. When he's done, he tidies up his little town of Marwen that he's erected in his side-yard—then, he opens one of the false facades of Marwen on his house which serves as a hobbit-heighth entrance inside to his intricately decorated house, split between dimensions of life-size (like Mark) and 1/6th scale (like his figures). He drops his dead Nazi soldiers into a plastic Tupperware bin marked R.I.P. A good day's work.

He avoids calls from his lawyer, who wants him to appear at the sentencing of the creeps who assaulted him. He notes a new neighbor, Nicol (Leslie Mann) moving in across the street, and the arrival—then forced leaving—of her abusive ex-boyfriend, Kurt (Neil Jackson), then his Russian caregiver, Anna (Gwendoline Christie, and yes, she's one of the "women of Marwen") stops by with groceries and his subscription of anxiety med's—he takes one and goes to bed.

This is his day, but his nights are restless, plagued by PTSD nightmares that he's being strafed by those five Nazi's (who we'll see resemble the creeps who beat him up) while Hogie and the women defend themselves at the Marwen pub, "The Ruined Stocking."

On good days, he'll load up his army into their jeep for a long stroll down the street—the better to give the jeep a weathered look—to do some work at the bar where he was attacked, cleaning up, working in the kitchen, check in with Carlala (Eiza González, another of the women), then visit the hobby store where he finds his figures and their fashions, under the guidance of Roberta (Merritt Wever), who is fond of him and encourages his artwork, helping to set up a gallery showing in New York.

Zemeckis' movie veers between Hogancamp's reality and fantasy life, which creates a dramatic tension between the mock-heroic brio of the dolls and the fragile, damaged reality that he lives in the day-to-day. The two wage war with his psychological well-being and it bleeds over into the movie, as well. The tonal shift is the biggest issue with Welcome to Marwen (although it's probably the reason Zemeckis was drawn to the project in the first place, working with scenarist Caroline Thompson, who wrote Edward Scissorhands, The Addams Family, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride).

"To the women of Marwen"—they drink alcohol; he drinks coffee.

Carell's Hogancamp is such a troubled, docile figure that you get a severe disconnect with the fast-paced, occasionally goofy rambunctiousness that the doll-fantasy sequences evoke. You wonder how Carell's Hogancamp can keep these weird hyper goings-on in his head without exploding or going nuclear. Mentally, those sequences veer into "fight" mode, but his actions in the real world are of the "flight" variety, and, although it tries to come up with a scenario where the two can be resolved, it doesn't really work, not to any degree of satisfaction. At the end, Hogancamp appears far more courageous and risk-taking, but how he gets there is inexplicable.

His relationship with neighbor Nicol is also troublesome. Yes, Hogancamp is damaged. Yes, he is barely under control and (mostly) harmless to anyone but himself. But, the way his fantasies influence his reality—especially, in regards to her—makes him pursue a course that falls into "stalker" mode, making him, in the big picture, little better than the "Kurt" character he loathes...and fears. It is that aspect of the story that is the biggest failure of the film—one sees Hogancamp's motivations, but he has no real conflict other than with the differences between his fantasy reality and his true reality, essentially creating drama in his real life to match his fantasies, not unlike a lovesick and clueless suitor. If one has any sympathy for her, Carell's Hogancamp appears dangerous and unsympathetic, which tests the audience's resolve. Ultimately, the "Nicol" character serves no good purpose other than as an excuse for some exposition that gives us a little more explanation of what's going on in Hogancamp's head besides doll-fights.

I haven't seen Marwencol (the trailer is below), but I'm sensing that, without the dizzying, dizzy doll-sequences, the documentary gives more insight into his mind-set than including all the sequences with play-sets.

For a movie to truly work, it needs to communicate below the surface-level. In the case of Welcome to Marwen, it does not show us what it's like to walk around in somebody's army-boots...or fashionable pumps.

The Heroes of Marwen—the fantasy versions

* This top image is the one I saw posted on Facebook that was posted as a meme.

** sarcasm alert

*** For those familiar with the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs, you will recognize the name "Dejah Thoris" as belonging to the Princess of Mars from Burroughs' "Barsoom" stories.