At first glance the title feels like a horror story. Actually in reality, Welcome to Marvin's archetype, what happened to Mark Hogancamp wasn't much better than a horror story.
As shown in the movie, in 2000, Mark Hogancamp was beaten by five people because he inadvertently revealed his identity as a transvestite in a bar. The attack left him in a coma for nine days and in a hospital bed for 40 days. In addition, he suffered severe brain damage, lost his memory, could not speak, and could not walk.
After saving his life, Mark can no longer pursue a career in painting, and his lost memories have never been retrieved. But Mark, who discovered his artistic talent, chose to regenerate himself in a different way, and he built the "Marwencol" that was later famous in the world.
Sadly, this DIY 1:6 WWII Belgian town was actually used to heal Mark and help him regain his cognitive and behavioral abilities. Through this self-compulsive construction, Mark can effectively restore self-awareness and social communication.
Unlike in the movie, those who beat him were not severely punished. Only the leader was sentenced to 9 years, two were sentenced to 5 years, and the remaining two escaped legal punishment.
The man who unearthed the story was photographer David Naugle, who lived in the same village as Mark Hogancamp. In 2010, 10 years after Mark was attacked, a documentary about the town of Marvin was released in the United States. Eighteen years later, the movie based on him came out, which is what we see today as Welcome to Marvin.
This live-action film has huge problems with the way it is presented, which, to some extent, directly contributed to the film's failure.
It's hard to imagine that, as a director who once filmed Forrest Gump, he would make such a low-level mistake.
Mark Hogancamp, played by Steve Carell, showed very obvious symptoms of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) in the film, and the accompanying mild personality split.
But when showing this, the director imagined such a person who had suffered severe psychological trauma. Mark in the film is presented as a fat, old, clumsy middle-aged fool with a bit of delusional traits, and there is an air of failure and weakness all over him.
At the beginning of the scene where the violent attack caused Mark's trauma, the director actually made Steve Carell lie on the ground and yell at us for some more ammo? ? ? And he shouted so loudly that he led the female neighbor over to inquire about the situation.
Not only does this presentation fail to make the audience empathize with what happened to Mark, but it makes the person feel ridiculous. The most important thing is that everyone on and off the screen feels embarrassed.
The original intention of this film is to let the audience feel sympathy for Mark, be healed by the Marvin town he built, and use Mark's experience of fighting demons to give people inspirational power.
But in actual performance, Mark's character has repeatedly pushed the audience away. The film presents a freak, not a living traumatized person.
The contrast is also psychologically traumatic, and Billy Lynn's midfield battle is obviously a rank higher than Welcome to Marvin Town. When Billy Lynn's sister was arguing with his mother, the sound of her mother slapping the table directly triggered Billy Lynn's stress response. Billy Lynn's act of jumping off the table is a fitting illustration of the trauma of being a returning veteran on the battlefield in Iraq.
Mark's apparent response to PTSD is to run away, which feels pompous and, in a way, a little ridiculous. Climbing out of the courtroom is simply embarrassing to the audience. Mark turns the desire of so many people to help him into a joke of which he is the biggest part.
I don't know why, but the director deliberately made Mark such an unpleasant person.
In addition to the stress disorder with many problems, the problem of interpersonal communication has also become a very fatal deduction item for the character.
The part where Roberta invited him to dinner at the model shop. Instead of voluntarily rejecting the invitation, Mark kept avoiding the invitation. It is important to know that even the most socially phobic people find various reasons to decline, rather than avoid face-to-face invitations. It is very impolite to do so!
Mark is just afraid of socializing with strangers, not lacking the necessary common sense of interpersonal communication. To put it bluntly, it's not that he doesn't know how to be friends with people, he's just scared.
Mark's social phobia in the movie is that I don't talk to you, and I pretend I don't hear you when you come to me.
Of course, to be fair, Roberta's overwhelming desire to control is really overwhelming. The part about asking Mark if he wanted coffee was almost forcing him to drink it.
But in any case, dealing with Mark requires great patience and kindness. Otherwise, it would be hard for everyone to endure Mark's evasive + delusional communication style.
In fact, judging from the content presented in the film, Mark himself should have suffered considerable psychological trauma. But in addition to making normal people discriminate against this group, the exaggerated stress disorder does not well understand the meaning of this film.
The damage Mark suffered is far deeper than what is shown in the film, and Marvin Town itself is the most direct manifestation of the damage Mark suffered.
In Marvin, Mark fantasizes about Hogie, an American soldier who crashed a plane in a Belgian town during World War II, and a squad based on the female characters who take care of him by his side, to protect himself from the attackers based on his beatings. Injury of Nazi soldiers.
In other words, Mark needs to split out a part of his braver personality to protect himself from traumatic memories.
You must know that in psychology, trauma that can lead to split personality is not a trivial matter. It does not mean that you can fall out of a personality if you walk and fall. Anyone who can lead to split personality, even a mild split personality like Mark, has suffered huge trauma. Often, the patient is under chronic anxiety and stress.
The film doesn't really tell enough of the background of the story. Mark actually had a serious alcohol problem before he was beaten, and this problem caused his wife and son to be separated and his family lost. This part explains why Deja the witch appears, and Deja repeatedly wants to take away his girlfriend and resurrect the Nazis who want to kill him.
The witch Deja actually represents an addiction problem. Mark was beaten because he was drunk in a bar and had a conversation with someone he shouldn't have approached. His beating had nothing to do with his transvestite behavior, he didn't wear high heels that day, and the whole thing was just an excuse for the gang to fight. At the same time, the problem of alcoholism caused him to lose his wife and lose his children. In the spiritual world of Marvin, Deja represents in a way the alcohol that keeps ruining his life.
In fact, there are a lot of references to this in the film. Nicol's ex-husband, who terrified Mark, was fired for 2 DUIs. When Hogie was kidnapped, the girls used Molotov cocktails made of alcohol to kill the Nazis.
So in this world of Marvin Town, the witch Deja kept resurrecting the Nazis, and kept disappearing the people around Hogie who were close to him.
Hogie and his team can easily take out the Nazis, but they can't take out the witch Deja. In other words, his beating can only be said to trigger the serious mental trauma. What really made Mark difficult to live with was the addiction caused by mental stress.
The color of the witch Deja was actually the color of the medicine Mark was taking to treat him. Anna, who took care of him, told him that this medicine should not be taken too much, it would become addictive and it would be very bad for his health.
And on the night Mark was rejected by Nicol, he poured out too many capsules and wanted to escape directly from this painful reality.
Addiction problems stem largely from anxiety and stress about real life. Mark, on the other hand, felt guilty for the people he had hurt.
His alcoholism cost him his family, and subconsciously, he attributed Nicol's rejection of him to drug addiction.
This also explains why the witch said when she seduced him.
Know that running away from pain is the easiest thing to do, and it's far easier to get into the arms of alcohol or drugs than it is to face reality.
And the witch Deja in the film has been talking about taking him to the future to live with him. This is actually Mark's subconscious telling him that if the addiction problem can't be solved, the future life may never get out of this endless cycle. Only if Mark is determined to give up his addiction to drugs and alcohol can the witch Deja be taken away and Mark's life can return to normal.
This incident laid the groundwork for his subsequent awakening.
In the final showdown, Mark chose to stay and face reality instead of going to the future with the witch Deja. In this way, it is shown that Mark overcomes the demons and is finally reborn. In reality, Mark poured the drug down the drain and eventually testified in court.
After watching it, I actually feel sorry for the film Welcome to Marvin Town. The director's lack of understanding of the symptoms of PTSD, and the lack of clarity on Mark's real problems, made the audience completely unable to feel immersed in it.
At the same time, I am amazed at the power of the Hollywood film industry. Being able to animate the puppets without any sense of incongruity, the visual effects shown in them are amazing.
But in any case, this film does not show the true essence of Marvin Town at all. It is really a pity to let the audience get lost in the so-called political correctness of the exquisite puppet-like appearance, and let the final effect of the film finally show the feeling that no one is allowed to enter.
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