About four years ago, legendary director Robert Zemeckis released a new film entitled Welcome to Marwen and looking back on it now, it seems like the precursor to the Pinocchio remake.
The film follows the life of aspiring artist Mark Hogancamp after he is savagely beaten nearly to death by five white supremacists outside of a bar. As a way to cope with the trauma, Mark uses doll figures and builds a miniature town to vent his rage and frustration at his attackers. Mark uses the dolls to illustrate all of the people that are relevant in his life and creates his fantasy to escape the reality that he has been accustomed to.
First of all, when this movie came out, a lot of people thought of this film as a weird science experiment that was conjured up by Robert Zemeckis and, don’t get me wrong, it is at times. However, it remains as something of a next level up for the director, in terms of technological advancements.
Zemckis has always been a fanatic of performance-capture since the olden days of The Polar Express and that feeling has not waned at all. The visuals remain as magical as the story that inspired it.
Speaking of the story, the film is based on a true story where Mark Hogancamp was at a bar and began to talk with a few strangers at said bar. However, things took a turn for the worse when he mentioned to the men that he was a crossdresser. As a result, the men beat him within an inch of his life and he was in a coma for nine days.
After waking up from his coma, he was forced to relearn everything that he had known, which included eating, writing and even readjust to his own life.
This film works as a modest homage to Hogancamp’s struggles and illustrates those struggles with his CGI dolls coming to life. Zemeckis has had a propensity to use visual thrills to create a magical film. This Steve Carell movie is no exception. The film is an assessment into a tortured man’s mind and how he copes with hsi trauma and whether it comes off as corny or strange is all a matter of perspective. Art is always subjective and that’s all that matters.
