Welcome to Marwen (2018)

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Director: Robert Zemeckis

Screenplay: Robert Zemeckis and Caroline Thompson

Cast: Steve Carell as Mark Hogancamp / Cap'n Hogie; Falk Hentschel as Captain Topf / Louis; Matt O'Leary as Lieutenant Benz / Carl; Nikolai Witschl as Rudolph / Rudy; Patrick Roccas as Stefan / Stevie; Alexander Lowe as Werner / Vern; Eiza González as Carlala; Leslie Zemeckis as Suzette; Merritt Wever as Roberta; Gwendoline Christie as Anna; Stefanie von Pfetten as Wendy; Janelle Monáe as GI Julie; Leslie Mann as Nicol; Neil Jackson as Kurt / Major Meyer

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

In 2010, a documentary called Marwencol was made by Jeff Malmberg, one I saw many years later, taking a while to reach the UK (taking nearly the whole decade for a proper release let alone a mere DVD). It's subject Mark Hogancamp, after a violent beating by multiple men at once, lost most of his memories and found solace in creating a fake town in the midst of World War II with one male doll representing his idealised heroic self, many female dolls openly based off women in his real life the main populous of the town alongside Nazis as the villains. His tale is fascinating, and he became an acclaimed artist/photographer as his photographs of Marwencol, as the village was christened, became better known. As material for Back to the Future director Robert Zemeckis though, considering the additional details of Hogancamp's life and how Zemeckis tries to convey it, makes Welcome to Marwen such an odd mainstream production to ever green light.

It's also Zemeckis after, weirdly, adapting the central material from documentary Man on Wire (2008), about Philippe Petit's legendary high wire stunt between the Twin Towers, into the fictional film The Walk with 3D scope. In general Zemeckis has had a curious history since the late nineties of pushing himself further into new technological potentials with cinema; hell, arguably Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) was too in combining two dimensional character with actors like Bob Hoskins. In-between this he's made dramas (Flight (2012), Allied (2016)) but also had his history with full motion captured characters with the likes of Beowulf (2007). In many ways this feels appropriate as, to depict the world of Marwencol (Marwen here at first), Zemeckis' first idea is to have his cast (including his real life wife and scholar Leslie Zemeckis) contrasted with versions of them with their faces digitally placed onto dolls. That's just skimming the top of what idiosyncratic (to say the least) decisions he took.

Openly, the idea of adapting Hogancamp's life into this film is problematic for myself, to condense a very difficult subject, but I came into the film with this moral standpoint on the artistic endeavour in mind, so took the decision to view this movie as a fictionalisation in its own world. As a result, the tears and awkward nagging strains of the film, under it's apparent and clichéd tale of overcoming one's burdens, makes it also one of the few legitimately interesting adaptations of a real figure I have seen. Most biopics or inspirations tales taken from real life, even those acclaimed, are usually simplistic and reduce the virtues of heroes to trivialities, hard work of creators to mere motages, or make material up. Welcome to Marwen has an issue that its subject is idiosyncratic (at least in the version depicted) that would raise questions without additional context.

He is a sympathetic figure, though there is an innate difference between the real man and his stand-in in Steve Carell which without the original source is a curious character to depict to say the least, someone who has built a WWII town where he is on man in a world of sexy dolls, figures openly based on real women even in his town that, whilst strong fighters, still wear fetishized clothes. That Hogancamp in real life, as told here, was violently beaten up (while very drunk) for confession his interest in wearing women's clothing does complicate this in a lot of ways, but this is still a character in fictional form, without the original context, that will elicit a lot of complicated reactions from viewers. He's sympathetic because he was discriminated against, because he was once an illustrator who lost most of his memories (as the real Mark Hogancamp) and reduced in this version to a disabled state, and because here he is depicted in Carell in having traumatic PTSD that is subconsciously drawn into Marwen(col), the Nazis obvious surrogates for the transgressors who hurt him. But still, this is still a curious world of fetishishtic female dolls and one man's boy's own adventures that occasionally burst through with stark death and with people in fictional Hogancamp's lives directly interacting with him outside of Marwen. It's not easy material and Zemeckis seems to obfuscate and load it to be much more difficult to digest, something as much to pin on co-writer Caroline Thompson, whose career between Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands (1990), The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)) and films like Black Beauty (1994) really emphasises the schism on hand and that partially this was deliberate.

This was meant to be a big hit for Universal Pictures. Yet the sexual undercurrent, for a twelve certificate film in the UK (allowing twelve year olds to see it), is laced in so much complexity on the subject its incredibly adult, raising an obvious discrepancy between mainstream culture and art which transgresses this especially from outsiders like Mark Hogancamp. Mark Hogancamp's original work wasn't as exaggerated as this depiction, which in itself leads to a drastic change of tone as the production both adds more artificiality to the material and, with the hyper sexuality of plastic dolls, raises the undercurrent to a jarring level. Whether it's Roberta (Merritt Wever), the employee at the model store who clearly loves Hogancamp, who even comments about the absurd amount of times her doll has her shirt ripped off, or  that one of the dolls (played by Mrs. Zemeckis) is based on a porn star (allowing Leslie Zemeckis in none motion capture form to play her as a French maid bursting out the seams in a film-within-in-a-film) there's a lot of baggage about gaze and eroticism, not the stereotypical male gaze but a complicated form. That, "complicated", is an understatement in this fictionalised Hogancamp's gaze and how he has tried to cope with his trauma by interweaving women in his life through dolls but with an erotic side to it. Even without details from the original Marwencol, (no mention of catfights in the fictional version), this still means you have a muddy morality to deal with and, by accident and also deliberately prodded at in the script at the same time, any side able to be hit even in the same scene, you have to digest it whether you like it or not.

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The film thankfully doesn't try to hide this. It may seem odd how some of the women are more than happy to be figures in Marwen - something which Marwencol the documentary went out its way to deal with but interviewing them - but that entire section of the fictional Mark Hogancamp is where some of the most compelling aspects come to play, The film takes it time to depicts the steady friendly relationships of these women and how for Hogancamp now, life is merely getting by, frankly coping with buried trauma, whilst merely being able to talk to these women, completely empathetic to him and always wanting to know how their doll forms are, is as much them doing as much as they can to help him as it is part of being in a small town where everyone knows everyone, from his Russian caretaker Anna (Gwendoline Christie) to co-worker at a bar named Carlala (Eiza González).

Some aspects however will stick out with an uncomfortable jagged edge, that being the burgeoning relationship between Hogancamp and his new female neighbour Nicol (Leslie Mann) who he develops a crush on, but with a discomforting obsessive edge to it with her doll stand-in being his counterparts beloved, something which the film openly deals with. As much as this world has figures like G.I. Julie, a small role for singer Janelle Monáe, based on a former war veteran who helped Hogancamp overcome his initial physical trauma in hospital, this subplot with Nicol does actually get to the stage it feels like it's going to turn into a Todd Solondz film but suitable for twelve year olds, something utterly unexpected and jarring for this mainly light hearted film meant to be inspirational.

Knowing how and why Hogancamp's work came to be also makes Zemeckis' creative decisions with Marwencol itself even stranger but clearly deliberate. It's fascinating, actually praiseworthy, in spite of the divisiveness of his run of motion capture films how his decision to motion capture the dolls to the cast, and embrace the artificiality, is inventive and has a lot of additional weight to the various quirks on hand. Hogancamp's own world was unconventional already, not wanting to forget Deja Thoris (as played by Diane Kruger here), a blue haired witch who (in the documentary and here) eventually brings in a time machine and was the figure looming over Hogancamp's stand-in doll, here a crux to Hogancamp's anxieties and the weight pressing him down alongside the Nazis, here never actually dying truly as they are merely dolls who get up a while later. Zemeckis may sanitise some of the details, but he still stages the Nazis whipping the male doll in a fetished way, an icon photo that is recreated with as much a sick humour here, able to get away with a lot for this film because the action is entirely done with fake dolls but still containing these emotional splinters.

There are also moments which are entirely subjective in whether they are meant to be sincere or unintentionally more muddied. Hogancamp's speech of the "female essence" he finds in owning and wearing women's shoes does have an oddness to it, whilst later his comment about women being the strongest of all is undercut in an action scene involving a Delorean stand-in time machine and a doll getting a stiletto shoe to the neck.

Does Welcome to Marwen work? I'd say yes, if that I'd suggest the film only starts to slip in how hastily it tries to wrap everything up for the ending in spite of the psychological baggage making it impossible to, the story (in lieu to Hogancamp's real life alcoholism before his assault) about this version eventually having to overcome addiction. Aside from this, the tonal shifts and conflicts the viewer will have is a lot more credible in dealing with such a subject matter than trying to be morally sanitised or judgemental. It cannot hide the darkness of what Mark Hogancamp suffered through, and even the kitsch of the CGI doll village scenes, because it completely exaggerates what were a form of psychological diorama into an exaggerated boy's own adventure, has a strange effect particularly as a) the melding of real actors with these dolls is eerie if visually incredible, and b) the artificiality at hand even being part of its world is weird to say the least. What the real Mark Hogancamp created with his camera and his town was profound, whilst this is an odd work we see onscreen adding new layers even when it fucks up the tone badly at points, an expletive I feel if appropriate language to use as this film is still a mess, but a compelling and ambitious one, spoken with love rather than to offend anyone in this production (including Steve Carell who, bless him, actually gives a great performance) who tried their best.

Robert Zemeckis to his credit does his damndest in terms of high quality of Hollywood production and, if anything, to use it for a much more complex work even if sometimes unintentionally is a far better use of such production. I've found myself drawn more to these "divisive" works which usually are slaughtered critically in film publications or newspaper reviewers, though Welcome to Marwen has its defenders, as the moments which cause issue are usually the most interesting and more layered details. When a film is praised to the hilt there 's a danger, proven too many times, that it's just heading for obvious details which are copied, always evoking for myself an off-the-cuff comment made by a character in Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls about how easily manipulated viewers are when emotions and an audience's moral righteousness are exploited for drama. Here however, even if at times there are clear moments as here which do need to be questioned as creative decisions, there's a risk at hand that is so much more interesting, the moments of something tonally amiss getting an actual reaction from myself and forcing me to have to think of what exactly my opinion is. It at least offers more to talk about after a viewing.

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