Welcome To Marwen (2019) - Movie Review

This film was supposed to have gotten a theatrical release this year. I’ll be damned if I saw any evidence of that, though. We went from fairly frequent trailers for this to just… nothing. Until it popped up for home video release, this might as well have not even come out over here. While the current Hollywood structure is turning this scenario into what looks to be a regularity (what with Disney shelving so many of Fox’s releases after buying them out), this still doesn’t make sense.

This is Robert Zemeckis, one of the vanguards of American cinema and a filmmaker who has always been on the cutting edge of what film technology is capable of; how did his latest feature end up being left at the wayside? Well, while I’m certainly not going to make the argument that this film never should’ve have seen release, I will admit that I at least understand why this film would have been… deprioritised, as it were.

Based on the real-life story of artist Mark Hogencamp, previously featured in the documentary Marwencol, the production feels like Zemeckis operating in his tech-savvy wheelhouse. Taking inspiration from Hogencamp’s work with dolls and the titular model town of Marwen, the film basically serves as an example of narrative therapy, here used to help Mark get past a violent hate crime inflicted on him that not only deeply traumatised him, but also wiped all of his memories from before the attack.

Steve Carell, both as Hogencamp and the one-liner-spouting action hero avatar Captain Hogie, brings staggering empathy to the role, creating palpable sorrow from just how tragic his circumstances are. Add onto that the character’s prominent cross-dressing, its role in the attack itself, and Diane Kruger as the embodiment of every negative thought in the man’s head as a result, and it can get quite heartbreaking.

Of course, that’s when the film has enough verve to actually focus on the harder stuff. For the most part, we’re watching Hogencamp’s miniature play in action, with Captain Hogie serving as the protector of a group of gun-toting women (all based on people in Hogencamp’s life) that is under constant attack from seemingly-unkillable Nazis. The animation work on the dolls themselves are very effective, really nailing the plastic-jointed look of the characters without it interfering too much with the motion-capture performances. Of course, the care and effort put into them gets cut down by how, when the two stories are put together, one saps at the effectiveness of the other.

Not to say that juggling both sides of the story is an inherently bad idea; it certainly makes for one of the more unique biopics I’ve covered on here and its handling of post-traumatic stress is impactful yet respectful. But what ultimately lets this film down is its tone, or rather its lack of a consistent one. It keeps trying to aim for this Secret Life Of Walter Mitty equilibrium, juxtaposing fantasy and reality to show the main character’s headspace, but it just ends up hitting weird note after weird note. For every shockingly stark depiction of the hate crime at the story’s impetus, there’s a weak one-liner from Hogie, an attempt at lightness that clashes too heavily, or just the underlying idea that Hogencamp is basically fetishising the women in his life like he’s a teenager writing fan-fiction.

In better hands, that general ambiguity could have worked to highlight both how much this process is helping to heal Hogencamp as well as how it is holding him back from truly confronting his trauma. In the hands of Robert Zemeckis and co-writer Caroline Thompson, whose best work is decades-old as collaborator on Tim Burton’s more celebrated features, it just ends up feeling like a film that knows how to deliver its emotional pathos and captivating visuals, but stumbles when attempting anything else. I’m almost angry in how disappointed I am with this, because when the more emotional scenes are this bloody effective, it shouldn’t be too much to ask that the rest of the film be able to match it and not just knock itself out of its own groove.