originally posted at Toronto Star:
Marwencol: A tiny world within
Editorial Rating: 3 (out of 4)
by Bruce DeMara
After five drunken yobs beat him nearly to death outside a bar, Mark Hogancamp is a changed man. After nine days in a coma and 40 days in hospital, the Kingston, N.Y. native has little memory of his past life. Not surprisingly, the U.S. health care system cuts him off from Medicaid, forcing him to pick up the shattered fragments of his life pretty much on his own.
Is it any wonder that Hogancamp retreats into a fantasy world he calls Marwencol, a miniature World War II town constructed of cardboard and hobby store accessories and populated with valiant action figure American soldiers, beautiful Barbie doll women and evil SS troops? Using a badly-functioning camera, Hogancamp creates a series of “stills” — similar to his own memory — and becomes an unlikely artist of sorts, attracting the attention of a magazine editor that eventually leads to having a show of his work in New York's Greenwich Village.
To say the chain-smoking Hogancamp is an unlikely subject of a documentary is an understatement. By his own admission, prior to the accident he was a serious boozer with a failed marriage behind him, stuck in a dead-end job at a local restaurant. Post-trauma, he remains a fearful eccentric who can be seen walking down the side of the road near his home towing a toy jeep filled with Marwencol characters to ensure its tires show a proper amount of wear. If nothing else, at least his appetite for booze is gone with the beating that has permanently scrambled his brain, leaving him a man-child naïf.
Director Jeff Malmberg sees something in Hogancamp that he wants all of us to see, an imperfect human scarred by horrific trauma who nonetheless finds a reason to live — even if much of his time is spent within a fantasy world — and a previously undiscovered artistic soul.
Like Hogancamp's understanding of himself, there are some pieces missing. We don't know what happened to his marriage, only that it is over. We see photos of the five creeps who attacked him and hear briefly from one of them via a police tape recording, but have little understanding of their motivation. Hogancamp does have one little kink — one the film's producers don't want revealed — that may have triggered the beating and no, it's not that he's gay.
Malmberg allows us to see Hogancamp, imperfect as he is, as a man worthy of empathy and respect, not just a victim but a man who strives to believe in the goodness of others and to find peace within himself. It's not an easy film to watch and Hogancamp isn't the most obvious protagonist. But the film carries a message of redemption and hope that all can heed.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Toronto Sun: Marwencol
originally posted at Toronto Sun:
'Marwencol' deserves Oscar buzz
Editorial Rating: 4.5 (out of 5)
by Jim Slotek
A haunting movie about a haunted man, Marwencol is a revelatory documentary which is already generating Oscar buzz.
It manages to touch, in one personal profile, themes of consciousness, imagination and reality, indomitability of spirit, alternative lifestyles, the nature of art, even the sink-or-swim harshness of the American healthcare system.
And it defends the dignity of the documentary -- a genre that seemingly has been hijacked of late by polemicists and sophomoric pranksters (yo, Joaquin!).
The subject of Marwencol is Mark Hogancamp, a man who was beaten nearly to death by five men outside a bar in Kingston, N.Y., in April 2000 and left in a coma. After 40 days in hospital, he emerged with impaired motor skills, severe memory loss (he couldn't remember having once been married for several years) and myriad odd brain chemistry changes (a longtime alcoholic, he found his desire for liquor had completely disappeared).
A perfunctory state-funded therapy program quickly ran out, leaving Hogancamp basically alone. On his own, living in a trailer, he created a strange form of therapy, sort of dollhouse Gestalt. He constructed a town in Nazi-occupied Belgium named Marwencol (a collage of his name and the names of Wendy and Colleen, a co-worker and a friend), full of Barbies, G.I. Joes and other action figures dressed in carefully tailored period clothing to support their backstory.
The backstory: Hogancamp is an American airman who crashes behind enemy lines. Wandering about, he discovers Marwencol, a town where the men have either fled or been conscripted, and the women remain. It's his town now, and he creates a bar reminiscent of Casablanca's Rick's Café Americain, where American and German soldiers can drink in a state of truce.
All, that is, except for the SS, who hover about menacingly seeking the bar.
To Hogancamp, they represent the men who beat him. And in one of his cathartic plotlines, he is kidnapped and tortured by these very same men, with a different result.
In fact, everybody in Marwencol turns out to be a representation of somebody Hogancamp knows in real life. All his friends and co-workers, the married neighbour he knows he can't have (but whom he makes love to in miniature), the professional photographer who discovers his proxy life and deems it art, even the director of the film become characters.
There's a witch, there's a time machine, and there are paroxysms of Inglourious Basterds-style violence (yes, these are dolls we're talking about). Dutifully photographed in storyboard style by their creator with all the emotion and drama their frozen faces can muster, it's no wonder they'd end up in a gallery.
And that's the second half of Marwencol -- Hogancamp's New York debut, and no-less-than heroic attempt to represent himself at his own gallery show.
His "discovery" doesn't make Hogancamp rich, but it does free up other aspects of his damaged personality that paint a fuller picture of what went on that night in 2000.
Hogancamp's artificial reality is clearly so real to him, it demands respect. Credit director Jeff Malmberg, who takes what could have been simply presented as a freak show and allows it its dignity.
'Marwencol' deserves Oscar buzz
Editorial Rating: 4.5 (out of 5)
by Jim Slotek
A haunting movie about a haunted man, Marwencol is a revelatory documentary which is already generating Oscar buzz.
It manages to touch, in one personal profile, themes of consciousness, imagination and reality, indomitability of spirit, alternative lifestyles, the nature of art, even the sink-or-swim harshness of the American healthcare system.
And it defends the dignity of the documentary -- a genre that seemingly has been hijacked of late by polemicists and sophomoric pranksters (yo, Joaquin!).
The subject of Marwencol is Mark Hogancamp, a man who was beaten nearly to death by five men outside a bar in Kingston, N.Y., in April 2000 and left in a coma. After 40 days in hospital, he emerged with impaired motor skills, severe memory loss (he couldn't remember having once been married for several years) and myriad odd brain chemistry changes (a longtime alcoholic, he found his desire for liquor had completely disappeared).
A perfunctory state-funded therapy program quickly ran out, leaving Hogancamp basically alone. On his own, living in a trailer, he created a strange form of therapy, sort of dollhouse Gestalt. He constructed a town in Nazi-occupied Belgium named Marwencol (a collage of his name and the names of Wendy and Colleen, a co-worker and a friend), full of Barbies, G.I. Joes and other action figures dressed in carefully tailored period clothing to support their backstory.
The backstory: Hogancamp is an American airman who crashes behind enemy lines. Wandering about, he discovers Marwencol, a town where the men have either fled or been conscripted, and the women remain. It's his town now, and he creates a bar reminiscent of Casablanca's Rick's Café Americain, where American and German soldiers can drink in a state of truce.
All, that is, except for the SS, who hover about menacingly seeking the bar.
To Hogancamp, they represent the men who beat him. And in one of his cathartic plotlines, he is kidnapped and tortured by these very same men, with a different result.
In fact, everybody in Marwencol turns out to be a representation of somebody Hogancamp knows in real life. All his friends and co-workers, the married neighbour he knows he can't have (but whom he makes love to in miniature), the professional photographer who discovers his proxy life and deems it art, even the director of the film become characters.
There's a witch, there's a time machine, and there are paroxysms of Inglourious Basterds-style violence (yes, these are dolls we're talking about). Dutifully photographed in storyboard style by their creator with all the emotion and drama their frozen faces can muster, it's no wonder they'd end up in a gallery.
And that's the second half of Marwencol -- Hogancamp's New York debut, and no-less-than heroic attempt to represent himself at his own gallery show.
His "discovery" doesn't make Hogancamp rich, but it does free up other aspects of his damaged personality that paint a fuller picture of what went on that night in 2000.
Hogancamp's artificial reality is clearly so real to him, it demands respect. Credit director Jeff Malmberg, who takes what could have been simply presented as a freak show and allows it its dignity.
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.
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.
Globe and Mail: Marwencol
originally posted at Globe and Mail:
Marwencol: Dolls, Nazis and fiction as brain therapy
Editorial Rating: **** (out of 4)
by Liam Lacey
One of the oddest and most moving documentaries since Best Boy or Grey Gardens, Jeff Malmberg’s debut film, Marwencol, is a marvel. A portrait of a small-town drunk whose near-fatal beating turned him into a compelling outsider artist, it is both an inspirational back-from-the-abyss tale and an uncanny experience of watching a mind trying to heal itself by creating fiction.
In 2000, 38-year-old Mark Hogancamp lived in an upstate New York town where he was a part-time illustrator and “gallon a day” drunk. One night, outside a bar, he was viciously beaten by five men. After recovering from a nine-day coma, he had lost his taste for alcohol and most of his memory. When his health benefits ran out, he invented his own form of therapy to keep his hands and mind busy: he started playing with children’s dolls and action toys.
The result was a 1/6 scale Second World War-era Belgian town named Marwencol that fills his backyard, built of scrap construction materials and populated by more than 100 Barbie dolls and G.I. Joe action figures.
Marwencol (a contraction of the names of Mark and two women friends, Wendy and Colleen) is also a simulacrum of Hogancamp’s hometown, Kingston, N.Y., populated by dolls representing the artist, his friends, the occasional celebrity (Arnold Schwarzenegger, rock star Thom Yorke) and even his assailants, dressed as SS officers.
Because he was unable to draw any more, Hogancamp bought a camera and began photographing his dolls and creating stories about their world. Some of his ideas seem inspired by the 1960s Nazi-prison-camp comedy Hogan’s Heroes (a play on his surname) but there are also time machines, episodes of brutal violence and revenge, and, for the soldiers’ entertainment, evenings of girl-on-girl wrestling.
Malmberg treats Hogancamp, a down-to-earth guy with extremely specific aesthetic ideas, with non-patronizing fascination. We are placed in the world of Marwencol (including a bit of stop animation), shooting the dolls from low angles and getting to know them as characters in an imaginary movie.
But even in a town of plastic heroes and beauties with frozen stares, real life has a way of intruding. A local photographer managed to get Hogancamp’s work into a New York art magazine. A gallery called. Those developments set up the second act of Marwencol, in which Hogancamp deals with his private world going public.
Thanks to some of Malmberg’s own storytelling savvy – he holds back a significant detail of the night that changed Hogancamp’s life until late in the film – Marwencol doesn’t stop delivering surprises until its last frame.
Marwencol: Dolls, Nazis and fiction as brain therapy
Editorial Rating: **** (out of 4)
by Liam Lacey
One of the oddest and most moving documentaries since Best Boy or Grey Gardens, Jeff Malmberg’s debut film, Marwencol, is a marvel. A portrait of a small-town drunk whose near-fatal beating turned him into a compelling outsider artist, it is both an inspirational back-from-the-abyss tale and an uncanny experience of watching a mind trying to heal itself by creating fiction.
In 2000, 38-year-old Mark Hogancamp lived in an upstate New York town where he was a part-time illustrator and “gallon a day” drunk. One night, outside a bar, he was viciously beaten by five men. After recovering from a nine-day coma, he had lost his taste for alcohol and most of his memory. When his health benefits ran out, he invented his own form of therapy to keep his hands and mind busy: he started playing with children’s dolls and action toys.
The result was a 1/6 scale Second World War-era Belgian town named Marwencol that fills his backyard, built of scrap construction materials and populated by more than 100 Barbie dolls and G.I. Joe action figures.
Marwencol (a contraction of the names of Mark and two women friends, Wendy and Colleen) is also a simulacrum of Hogancamp’s hometown, Kingston, N.Y., populated by dolls representing the artist, his friends, the occasional celebrity (Arnold Schwarzenegger, rock star Thom Yorke) and even his assailants, dressed as SS officers.
Because he was unable to draw any more, Hogancamp bought a camera and began photographing his dolls and creating stories about their world. Some of his ideas seem inspired by the 1960s Nazi-prison-camp comedy Hogan’s Heroes (a play on his surname) but there are also time machines, episodes of brutal violence and revenge, and, for the soldiers’ entertainment, evenings of girl-on-girl wrestling.
Malmberg treats Hogancamp, a down-to-earth guy with extremely specific aesthetic ideas, with non-patronizing fascination. We are placed in the world of Marwencol (including a bit of stop animation), shooting the dolls from low angles and getting to know them as characters in an imaginary movie.
But even in a town of plastic heroes and beauties with frozen stares, real life has a way of intruding. A local photographer managed to get Hogancamp’s work into a New York art magazine. A gallery called. Those developments set up the second act of Marwencol, in which Hogancamp deals with his private world going public.
Thanks to some of Malmberg’s own storytelling savvy – he holds back a significant detail of the night that changed Hogancamp’s life until late in the film – Marwencol doesn’t stop delivering surprises until its last frame.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Winnebago Man Q&A and QTV Appearance
Here's part of the Q&A with Jack Rebney from after the premiere at the TIFF Bell Lightbox last week:
And as a bonus, here's Jack Rebney attempting to do a station ID for Jian Ghomeshi's QTV show:
And as a bonus, here's Jack Rebney attempting to do a station ID for Jian Ghomeshi's QTV show:
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