Burl reviews Marwencol! (2010)

Hi, Burl here with a movie review for you! It’s a documentary I’m reviewing for you today, ha ha, called Marwencol! It’s all about a fellow named Mark who lives in a small upstate New York town who, after a night out at the local p*b, is set upon by ruffians and bootstomped into practically another dimension! It’s pretty awful!

But Mark survives the attack, and pretty soon he has a new way of looking at the world! He creates a whole world of his own, a little town called Marwencol, made of miniature houses and populated by Ken and Barbie and GI Joe dolls that are named after people he knows, and who are enacting a perpetual Occupied Europe scenario! He, of course, is the hero!

But of course he still suffers in myriad ways from his attack! His mind seems to move a little more slowly, and he finds it hard to rom*nce ladies! But on the other hand, where he was a big drinker before, now he has no taste for alc*hol at all! The dramas of Marwencol have completely possessed him, and he takes picture after picture, dramatizing and documenting the goings-on there!

Of course, his project finally gets some notice when a photo-artist meets him and decides that Mark’s work must be seen! And he’s right, and Mark doesn’t disagree, even though his project was really only intended for himself! Eventually Mark, wearing his prettiest pair of shoes, is on the way to Greenwich Village, the very hub of the artistic world in America, for his first big show!

Marwencol is a grand documentary! The best kinds of course are those which continually surprise you with revelations, but never feel like they’re keeping revelations from you just so they can parse them out that way! This one is mostly – mostly! – like that! It’s best not to read too much about a movie like this before you watch it, and even in reading this review, you have probably read too much! It’s not a case of so-called “spoilers,” or anything, just that some movies – perhaps many movies – are more enjoyable when you can just let them unravel in their own way and on their own time!

I’ll leave you with that, I guess! Marwencol has a great central character and is entertaining, and while the stakes are relatively low it’s nevertheless engaging and compelling the whole way through, and has a few things to impart about the human condition in the bargain! It indulges in many of the same sort of quirky small-town clichés as many fictional indie comedy-dramas, but that’s not its fault! I’m going to give Marwencol three bloodstained Barbies!