Welcome to Marwen (2018)
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
When a devastating attack shatters Mark Hogancamp and wipes away all memories, no one expected recovery. Putting together pieces from his old and new life, Mark meticulously creates a wondrous town named Marwen where he can heal and be heroic. As he builds an astonishing art installation — a testament to the most powerful women he knows — through his fantasy world, he draws strength to triumph in the real one.
2 connections found
View:
2 connections, in both directions
What critics compared Welcome to Marwen to
Welcome to Marwen , like Zemeckis’s longtime friend, mentor, and sometime producer Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One of earlier this year, is a kind of summation, a compendium of themes accumulated throughout his career and the occasional self-referential borrowing, as in the image of a model time machine that, when it speeds off to surf through the eons, leaves behind a pair of flaming tracks, à la Back to the Future (1985).
Zemeckis — the director of Forrest Gump, Cast Away, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the Back to the Future films and so much more, including 2016’s undervalued World War II thriller Allied — has come up with something like auteurist play therapy.
For decades, Robert Zemeckis was a master of expressive visual effects: The knitted timelines of the Back to the Future series, Roger Rabbit ’s fusion of live action and animation, and Contact ’s cosmos-spanning visions were stunning not just as technical achievements but for the way they told a story.
It’s directed by Robert Zemeckis, who, on the strength of the Back to the Future movies, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? , Cast Away , and Forrest Gump , has made more money than I’ll see in 40 lifetimes.
Now, eight years after the documentary, Marwencol has been given the Hollywood treatment, being handed off to none other than Robert Zemeckis, director of such hits as the Back to the Future franchise.
With Back to the Future , Who Framed Roger Rabbit , and Forest Gump , Zemeckis’s inconsequential themes of nostalgia and artificial American hope usually makes for joyous artifice.
And yet, Zemeckis is so determined to force Mark through the standard beats of a feel-good story that “Welcome to Marwen” eventually curdles into a softer version of “Sucker Punch,” where even the strongest female characters are only there to serve a man’s fantasy.
And if you’re now thinking “That sounds like the worst possible way to make this movie,” well — you’re obviously just the sort of spoilsport who thinks Born on The Fourth of July , The Accused , Sucker Punch and Small Soldiers weren’t meant to be mashed-up into one movie, so … jokes on you?
Here is a sentimental smushing-together of Small Soldiers and Sucker Punch , with a sidecar of unexpectedly uncomfortable sexuality and a surprisingly honest look at post-traumatic stress disorder and pharmacological addiction.