It's a doll's life in Jeff Malberg's Marwencol.
Marwencol. Directed by Jeff Malberg.
Today, we tend to associate living in an intricately-constructed fantasy world with digital simulations, such as “World of Warcraft” or “Second Life”. But as Jeff Malberg’s fascinating documentary Marwencol vividly shows, the analog variant still has certain advantages.
The story begins a decade ago, when a self-absorbed sketch artist and alcoholic named Mark Hogencamp was nearly beaten to death outside a Kingston, NY bar. Brain damage robbed him of basic abilities like speaking and walking, as well as most of his memories. By the gentle logic of America’s health care system, the destitute Hogencamp was kicked out of rehabilitation just as he began the arduous task of rebuilding his life. Without a past, without work skills, and still suffering from post-traumatic stress, he might well have ended up a permanent ward of the state, if not for a particular development: in his back yard, he has poured his time and energy into creating a 1/6 scale model of a WWII-era Belgian village. He calls the place “Marwencol”.
Though he can no longer draw, Hogencamp’s latent artistic skills are very much in evidence in his creation, cobbled together out of household odds and ends, recycled trash, and materials donated by a local hobby shop. The village is populated by a motley collection of war toys and no fewer than 27 Barbie dolls, each lovingly customized. In fact, they are modeled on real people in his life, including his mother, his boss, and a leather-jacketed “Mark Hogencamp” avatar based on a Nicolas Cage action figure.
As Malberg’s film documents, building and living through Marwencol has healed its maker in many ways, from restoring his manual dexterity to helping him sort through his emotions about the real world. His photographs of life in Marwencol—strikingly evocative slices of doll-life with a Tarantino-esque edge—have remarkable power whose casual intimacy are almost embarrassing to behold, as if we are all ten-inch tall peeping toms. Hogencamp’s blissful retreat is finally threatened by its own success, as the owner of a New York gallery offers to show his photographs. The artist is flattered, but perplexed, for in his eyes this isn’t “art” —it’s more real to him than reality. What to do when your refuge is so appealing, the outside world wants in?
Thematically, Marwencol boasts an embarrassment of riches. It is a story of the redemptive power of art—and a challenge to the very definition of art itself. It’s also something of a psychological fable in the Oliver Sacks tradition, reflecting both the precariousness and the resilience of the constructs we call our “selves”. Hogencamp’s fascination with Barbies (and with full-scale women's shoes) is ample grist for the mill of feminist criticism. He might even be taken as a kind of DIY deity, in the old Gnostic tradition of crazy gods who cobbled together our imperfect world. Indeed, if there’s anything wrong with Marwencol, it is feeling that it has bitten off—and failed to digest—more than it can chew. In this case, such sins are easy to forgive.
Copyright 2011 Nicholas Nicastro
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