A tiny town yields endless fascination in the must-see doc Marwencol
Small World
by Jim Ridley @countrylifeblog
Hollywood may be running low on surprises, but almost every week seems to bring a new documentary full of untold stories, engrossing subjects and the kinds of twists that can only be scripted by human experience. The latest is Jeff Malmberg's Marwencol, an eccentric character study that deepens into an appreciation of the mind's strategies for dealing with trauma, as well as art's possibilities for escape and liberation.
A decade ago, a near-death beating by five attackers at a small-town bar robbed Mark Hogencamp of his memory up to that point. He awoke from a coma to discover he'd once been married, he'd been a raging alcoholic, and he'd left detailed, luridly illustrated journals of his drunk years. (In a fascinating aside, the amnesia did away with his alcohol addiction.) In response to the attack, he created a 1/6-scale World War II town in his backyard called Marwencol, peopled with dolls who serve as surrogates for everyone in his life. The dolls enact bloody revenge scenarios (including symbolic restagings of the beating) along with intricate romances that both intrigue and disturb the real people they represent.
At every point where the movie could reduce Hogencamp to a lovable zany, Malmberg uncovers some trait or facet of his art that complicates him in our eyes. His dollhouse tableaux may be quirky, but they're not cute. Malmberg mines them for psychological insight, poignance and glimpses into Hogencamp's inner world, not amusement — although the obsessively detailed figures and posings never lose their otherworldly fascination. Marwencol becomes a kind of procedural into the unsolvable mystery of the imagination's workings, and the movie grows richer with each clue.
