NOW: Marwencol

originally posted at NOW:

Marwencol: Model Subject

Editorial Rating: NNNN (out of 5)

by Norman Wilner

Outsider art has never seemed as riveting – or as revealing – as it does in Marwencol, Jeff Malmberg’s study of Mark Hogancamp of Kingston, New York, who’s constructed an elaborate scale-model world in his backyard as a way to cope with the after-effects of a brutal beating that left him with a brain injury and memory loss.

Hogancamp’s fantasyland is a Belgian village where Germans and Americans can wait out the Second World War in peace. Its unfolding narrative finds his avatar, “Hank,” dragged away by the SS and tortured until the local women rally to his rescue, attacking the evildoers and liberating their hero.

Arranged and photographed by Hogancamp as an action epic, the film is wish fulfillment and self-mythologizing at its most nakedly obvious, though its creator doesn’t quite see it that way. That’s clearly what fascinates director Malmberg, at least at first; as the documentary progresses and Hogancamp’s ever-expanding installation becomes more and more complicated, another story emerges.

When the images of Marwencol come to the attention of a Greenwich Village art gallery, everything changes – and Malmberg probes still deeper into his subject’s complicated, wounded soul.

It’s absolutely thrilling to watch the camera push Hogancamp closer and closer to confronting some elements of himself that he obviously doesn’t want to discuss, and what happens after that is even more incredible.

This is one of the best movies you’ll see all year. Don’t let anyone ruin it for you.