After a vicious attack leaves him brain-damaged and broke, Mark Hogancamp seeks recovery in "Marwencol", a 1/6th scale World War II-era town he creates in his backyard.
14 Feb Marwencol (2010)
Exposed Cathouse Tortures
I saw this with a science documentary that bothered me because instead of giving us the worthwhile narrative of the actual events, it invented a narrative of ‘discovery‘ that was bogus and which occluded the cool stuff.
This film settled me because it is an intelligent examination of a related but larger issue. What do we care about the nature of an artist? How much does it matter? Does it matter that Vincent was an intriguing soul whose dark letters we have next to his brilliant sunflowers? Surely a life can be artfully lived; but what does it mean for it to be exposed as art?
You take your pick and create your own balance, and this film forces you into a disturbing dilemma.
The ‘outer‘ story is the one we are seemingly supposed to engage with: a sick but likeable man has interesting obsessions that in presentations outside the film are seen as art. This fits the template of documentaries about Robert Crumb, Henry Darger, Bruce Bickford and the dozens of fictionalised films about artists. We love knowing about them, in the delusion that knowing the artist somehow gives access to the magic of their art. In my experience, an artist is often the last person who can do this. He/she even becomes a barrier. (This excludes a class of personal exhibition that uses the body.)
Let’s just say that what matters here is that the artist is in a situation where his art matters to him, he is a master at framing a scene to richly confer narrative. And he does so with ordinary cameras and dolls.
The ‘inner‘ story here is one of tortured lives and simple romances as clarified through simple abstractions of pose. It is all about poses. The artifice that these are dolls in some demented guy‘s backyard fades away. We don’t see much of the artists work, because the filmmaker wants us to see his own. But when we do, it transports. I suspect that if we knew much less, they would matter more. But that balance, that balance is what we strike in our own tortured art of observation.
Posted in 2011
Ted’s Evaluation — 3 of 3: Worth watching.
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