Mark Reviews Movies: WELCOME TO MARWEN

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 20, 2018

Welcome to Marwen is a series of woefully miscalculated decisions, beginning and ending with the idea that, when it comes to the story of a man coping with severe memory loss and devastating post-traumatic stress disorder, the thing we should care about most is a fantasy world filled with moving, talking, and shooting dolls. The movie was co-written and directed by Robert Zemeckis, who had appeared to get away from his momentary obsession with motion-captured computer animation, only to return to it in an especially misguided way.

The story here—based on the true one of photographer Mark Hogancamp, who, in 2000, was brutally attacked, left comatose, and lost his memory and various physical functions—doesn't begin with its subject. Instead, it starts with a fantasy sequence of the artist's doll stand-in, flying through the skies of Belgium during World War II, crashing from flak fire, and being attacked by Nazi soldiers.

He's rescued by a group of machine gun-toting women, who live in the fictional village of Marwen, where the stand-in doll owns a bar. We learn more about this fantasy world than we do the real man, the women being represented by the tough dolls, or anything of any significant value to the real Hogancamp's story.

Indeed, we learn three major things about Mark (Steve Carell). He was attacked and suffers because of it. He takes photographs of dolls as a form of artistic therapy. He likes to wear women's shoes on occasion. That's about the extent of the real man here, and even then, the movie doesn't seem to have a grip on any of those things.

In regards to the attack and its aftermath, the movie presents them in fragmented pieces, from a scrapbook of photographs (One of them comes to life to show a brief snippet of him undergoing physical therapy) and newspaper clippings to an actual flashback late in the story. The aftermath and, more specifically, how it has affected Mark on a psychological level are tied directly to the photography sessions. Here, perhaps, is where Zemeckis and co-screenwriter Caroline Thompson make their gravest error.

The idea is that Mark uses his art to deal with what happened to him. His attackers were neo-Nazis, so the villains of his Marwen pieces are, of course, actual Nazis. The woman who would become his wife discovered him in the bar parking lot where the attack occurred, and Mark's life since the attack has been filled with strong and helpful women. They are the inhabitants of Marwen, whom Mark admires from a distance and who come to his rescue.

It is quite odd, though, that none of the real women in the movie are given any opportunity to be actual characters. The two major ones—Nicol (Leslie Mann), Mark's new neighbor who instantly sympathizes with him, and Roberta (Merritt Wever), who works at the hobby shop where Mark buys his dolls and models—are reduced to potential love interests. The others briefly appear in a scene or two.

We can comprehend the thinking behind the photography. Zemeckis, though, takes it way too far, turning Mark's art into a self-contained story, filled with over-the-top action sequences performed by computer-animated dolls.

The effect is triply odd. First, the sequences themselves are stilted, not only because of the intentionally rigid nature of the digital characters, but also in terms of rhythm and pacing. There are weird pauses between shots, as if Zemeckis thought of adding a sight gag or two and decided that, maybe, such a thing would be in bad taste (Such thinking didn't prevent him from putting an obvious visual gag in the middle of the climactic sequence, when Mark is wrestling with suicidal thoughts). Second, the fantasy story completely overtakes the real one in fundamental dramatic terms. The stakes are far higher in Marwen than in reality, and the characters have more life to them, despite being made of plastic and rendered by computers.

Finally and, perhaps, most detrimentally, it transforms Mark from a man suffering from PTSD into a man who appears to have lost touch with reality itself. In turning the photography sessions into full-blown fantasy sequences (more real, in certain ways, than the story's real world), Zemeckis—unintentionally, more than likely—performs something akin to an unethical misdiagnosis. Mark isn't simply wounded and traumatized. In the language of the movie, he is insane.

As a result, Welcome to Marwen isn't just telling the wrong story. It's telling the wrong story in an irresponsible way.

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