Welcome to Marwen: Review

After being savagely beaten and left for dead in the street, artist Mark Hogancamp (Steve Carrell) begins rebuilding his memories by constructing a fictional WWII town called Marwen.

Based on the true story of the life of artist and photographer Mark Hogancamp, in the hands of director Robert Zemeckis the emotion and poignancy of Welcome to Marwen‘s stimulus is completely transformed into an action-packed, melodramatic, nostalgia fest.

The critics’ main issue with Welcome to Marwen is that tonally it seems completely confused. A large majority of the film is made up of the motion captured Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds world of Marwen, which is overdramatic, fast-paced, and could be considered a parody of war/romance genre films. However, the reality of Mark Hogancamp’s life is the antithesis to life in Marwen. Living in a cramped, dingy bungalow that is stuffed with WWII artefacts, dolls, and memories of his past, PTSD-suffering Mark spends the majority of his days alone, over-medicating himself and blurring the lines between the world of Marwen and the gritty reality. It’s clear that Zemeckis wanted to enforce a huge tonal difference in order to emphasise the depletion of Mark’s mental state, and yet this juxtaposition was not enough, but also far too much at the same time. The emotional impact of both stories was completely lost, with each one overshadowing the other until it became merely a parody of itself. Pair this with a mediocre script, oddly timed moments of comedy, and Zemeckis’ need to remind everybody that he directed the Back to the Future films (she needs a time travelling car, no way!), any comment Welcome to Marwen was trying to make about PTSD – if any attempt was really being made in the first place – comes off as being a mocking one.

Although Steve Carrell’s performance was the best it could be given the materials he had to work with, nobody else ever gets a chance to shine, mainly due to the fact that every female character, despite the importance women hold in Mark’s life, is underdeveloped. Although Mark’s Marwen alter-ego Captain Hogie is insistent that women are the saviours of our world, the message of female empowerment is eclipsed by the frankly weird hyper sexualisation of the female dolls, one of whom has her shirt torn open by the Nazis, and runs bare-chested out of a church, much to the discomfort of the real woman she is based on. Not to mention that despite the fact that the female dolls are all based on women who have had an emotional impact on Mark’s life, most of these women appear in no more than one scene as their human selves. Julie (Janelle Monae), the female amputee who taught Mark how to walk again after his attack is given almost no screen time. When Nicol (Leslie Mann) moves in across the street, the audience is given little of her backstory. There is some attempt with the introduction of her ex bomb squad boyfriend Kurt (Neil Jackson), but his presence serves to facilitate Mark’s story rather than Nicols. And why is one of the female dolls based on a French maid porn star Suzette Sweet (Leslie Zemeckis)? This completely lessens the emotional depth behind these dolls.

The failure of Welcome to Marwen relies solely on Zemeckis trying to do too much and yet not enough at the same time. Perhaps the story would have worked better if it had stuck purely to the gritty, heart-wrenching reality Mark Hogancamp faced whilst recovering from being a victim of a hate crime. Steve Carrell would have flourished in this role no doubt, and with the upcoming release of Beautiful Boy audiences are beginning to see Carrell’s comedic typecasting be diminished and his talent flourish. Or perhaps having stuck to the wacky, over-the-top performance captured story of World War II soldier Captain Hogie and his town of ruthless women, the film could have been a heart-warming story of a man using the dark moments of his life to open the doors into the light.

Welcome to Marwen focused far too much on the performance captured aspect, and not enough on being an actual enjoyable story.