Marwencol is a documentary about Mark Hogancamp and his therapeutic dolls. Dolls you say? You see, Mark was jumped when leaving a bar one night and beaten within an inch of his life. He suffered traumatic brain injury, losing most of his memories. He had to learn everything over again but his motor functions suffered greatly. Once being able to draw anything that came to his mind, he found it difficult just to write his own name. That's when he started using dolls. He felt the need to work things out inside while still exercising his mind and hands. Since he could no longer draw out these intricate scenes, he started to model and shape dolls after people he knew and brief memories he still had. These scenes start to take on a life of their own, with back stories, time traveling, love, and even death. Mark took pictures of these scenes, so he won't forget and soon finds the pictures taking him a journey he never imagined for himself.
Marwencol definitely has the "strangely interesting" (as my teacher liked to say) character leading the story. And as the story goes on, you find new layers about him. However, the story seemed a little long at first. I thought I was watching a really long news featurette. It was interesting but I wasn't really sure what the filmmakers point was. That is until about 3/4 of the way through the movie when new information about Mark surfaced. Then it felt like the story was going somewhere and needed to be a documentary rather than a segment on the local news.
Although this film was released in 2010, it felt like it was made the 90's. I'm not sure if it took them that long to get enough funds for distribution or if it was just extremely low budget, but the film had a home video quality to it. And the shots they chose at times seemed a little random and didn't necessarily help the story at all.
Rating: ***
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