Country:
USA
Recognizable Faces:
Mark Hogancamp
Directed By:
Jeff Malmberg
The saddest thing about Marwencol is that many people will overlook it because of its title. It might not mean anything to you, but it's the name of a town in Belgium. There is a bar over there called Hogan's Camp, which hosts staged cat fights for your viewing pleasure. The most beautiful women in the country live there. They are tall, blond and Barbie-like. They are stuff of legends and visitors from all-Europe drop by to party with them. But it's not always fun and games in Marwencol. You get an odd case of serious violence, but the people have each other's back over there and it always ends well, despite the pain. Mark Hogancamp's Belgium isn't Europe though. It's in his backyard. And the people of Marwencol exist in his life only, in his mind. It's a doll town. The liveliest, most haunting doll town you've ever came across. It will stay with you for a long time after the viewing.
You have to know that Mark Hogancamp is not mentally challenged in any way. At least, he wasn't born like this. One night where he drank his sorrow away at a local bar, he was jumped and beaten to a near death by five your guys. I'm not going to tell you the WHY, because it's somewhat of a plot twist, but I will tell you this. He got beat up very badly. Repeatedly-stomped-on-the-face bad. I-forgot-everything-about-who-I-was bad. After forty days in the hospital, his insurance run out and he was spat back into the street by the system. He had to figure out for himself a way to heal his body and his mind, so he created Marwencol, a city and a world he's in complete control of. Or he used to be. Experiencing with narrative concepts for the first time in his life, Mark is confronted with characters that take a life of their own and events that just keep happening. Until he gets discovered by one of his neighbors, a professional photographer.
Marwencol is a beautiful film on trauma. It's also really, really fucking sad at the same time. But when there is beauty in sadness, there is also killer art. That's the thing with Mark, see. Since the savage beating he was a victim of, his whole self was wiped off from his memory. He was re-born out of that beating and therefore, it's at the center of his life and at the center of Marwencol. It's stunning to see how many storylines he's coming up with that involves violence (physical or mental) and pure injustice. Sometimes even carbon copies of the beating he's been a victim of. Marwencol is a way for Mark to cope with the unspeakable violence he's been a victim of. It's a place where he feels secure and in control, but it's not what will make him beat the odds. In fact, it's the odds that are tailing him.
For eighty-three minutes, my eyes were completely glued to the screen. It's the simple story of a man trying to cope with almost death and with the impossibility of completely recovering his identity. But it's a story that happens in two layers of reality and that ends up pretty well as Mark gets recognition for Marwencol and gets to expose his work in Manhattan. That made me question destiny and faith as the beating he received saved him from a life of misery ANYWAY because he was drowning in his own alcohol problem. And it got him to create something he couldn't have come up with before. It might have been the best thing that happened to him. Very strange, unique, interesting. And inspiring too. Any creative mind will start spinning like a hydraulic turbine from a viewing of Marwencol. Strongly recommended.
SCORE: 91%