As an oddball portrait of an artist, director Jeff Malmberg's documentary begs comparisons with In the Realms of the Unreal, which focused on another outsider—reclusive janitor Henry Darger and his obsessive private oeuvre of art and writings—except in the case of Marwencol, the film's eccentric subject, Mark Hogancamp, is alive and therefore available to explain himself. Although he almost wasn't, since a beating outside a bar in 2000 left Hogancamp brain-damaged and comatose. Awakening largely amnesiac (forgetting not only his marriage but also his chronic alcoholism), Hogancamp regained basic life skills and muscle control via self-therapy that incorporated his childhood love of toy-soldier action figures, redone on a vast scale in his backyard, where he created a fictitious WWII Belgian village, a neutral oasis called Marwencol. Hogancamp populated the imaginary locale with dolls of one-sixth life scale, complete with elaborate back stories of intrigue among Germans, Americans, seductive women, time travelers, and Hogancamp himself in alter-ego form, as a dashing saloon owner, occasionally reliving his trauma via dramatized Nazi torture. The film's storyline takes a turn when Hogancamp's close-up photos of Marwencol attract the attention of the New York art world and he is invited to display his photographs at a Greenwich Village gallery, which poses a major challenge to his apprehension over entering the real world. Working with footage shot over four years and allowing Hogancamp to tell most of the story himself, Malmberg's intriguing profile is highly recommended. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include deleted scenes (19 min.), eight additional story sequences (12 min.), subject Mark Hogancamp's reaction to the film (3 min.), a brief “Red Carpet” segment, a photo gallery, trailers, and a booklet with an intro by film critic Elvis Mitchell. Bottom line: a fine extras package for an excellent documentary.] (C. Cassady)
Marwencol
Cinema Guild, 84 min., not rated, DVD: $29.95, Blu-ray: $34.95, Apr. 12 Volume 26, Issue 2
Marwencol
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