When Meg Hamel introduced Marwencol last night she said that it was one of her favorites. It played at the Orpheum a few months ago and was also screened on campus. Yet here it is again, this time co-sponsored by the UW Department of Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education which also did the same for a few other films in the festival.
It is about the life of Mark Hogancamp who was brutally beaten outside a bar in his hometown of Kingston, New York. He lapsed into a coma for several days and remained in the hospital upon emerging for well over a month until Medicare stopped paying. Hogancamp found himself lacking both the funds for therapy and years of memories. So he decided to create his own therapeutic regimen which consisted of creating a section of a World War II era Belgian village to 1/6 scale and populating it with soldiers and townsfolk. Hogancamp used his camera and imagination to create stories within the village which he called Marwencol. You can hear the pride in his voice as he describes the all the work he's done to his creations right down to the most minute details. People from his life found that they had small-scale simulacra in Marwencol and were parts of the fantasies that he dreamt up.
It's almost like Philip K. Dick's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch has come true with its bored space colonists using Perky Pat dolls and a drug to shift into a hallucinogenic world.
Hogancamp is an eminently likable guy. Having been robbed of his memories, you can't help but sympathize with him as he struggles to, in essence, find himself by reading diaries to discover his past and immersing himself in Marwencol to act as a buffer between him and the outside world of the present. As my lady, The Dulcinea, remarked afterwards, it was fascinating to hear Hogancamp drift in an out of reality. There were times when you'd swear he would never return from Marwencol.
One thing I really enjoyed about the movie was that it left the viewer in an existential dilemma. Hogancamp described the world of Marwencol as being his self-imposed therapy. For instance, we see the attack outside the bar reenacted within the tiny town. Should we take it as a cathartic experience for him or not? Simply put, is this unconventional therapy working?
At one point we see his closet filled with women's shoes and the movie makes it out that Hogancamp has a bout of anamnesis wherein he recalls that he loves wearing them because he is a cross-dresser. Indeed, admitting as much was what got his attackers so riled up in the first place on that fateful night. This revelation coincides with a storyline about how a twist of fate leads to Hogancamp's photos ending up in an art magazine and eventually being put on display in a gallery in New York City.
While he musters the courage to attend the gallery opening and even wear a pair of high heels while he's there – something he would never do in Kingston – the movie, as best as I can recall, avoids explicitly saying that Hogancamp's submersion in the fantasy land of Marwencol had much of a palliative effect. To be sure, going to the big city was a big step but, at the end, Hogancamp still prefers the friendly confines of Marwencol. Back at home, his reality is still one where he can only work a few hours a week at a local restaurant and one that administers liberal doses of opprobrium and violence should he dare to put on women's clothing.
Ultimately Marwencol is a tragedy. There is humor to be had and even a glimmer or two of hope. I credit director Jeff Malmberg for taking about as light-hearted and non-judgmental an approach to his subject that he can, but Mark Hogancamp had his life brutally taken away from him when his memories were lost and now most of his solace is to be found in a 1/6 scale fantasy world in his front yard.
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