Welcome to Marwen
Categories: [ TV/Cinema ]
Five years earlier, Mark Hogancamp was beaten up and left for dead by a group of white supremacist because he admitted, while drunk, to sometimes enjoying wearing women's shoes. He has physically recovered but has lost all memory of his life before the attack. Formerly an illustrator specialized in World War 2, he cannot draw anymore and has turned to photography. Mark has constructed a model village named Marwen, set in Belgium during the war and built up a story about an American pilot, Hogie, who is rescued and later protected by the women of the village. Characters are represented by fashion dolls and each of the women of the village is imagined after a real woman whom Mark has met. The village is regularly attacked by Nazi soldiers who, despite being killed by the villagers come back to life thanks to Dejah Thoris, the village's witch. Mark photographs his fantasies to help him cope with memory loss and post-traumatic stress disorder. After a lot of hesitation, Mark agrees to appear in court to deliver a victim impact statement but upon seeing his attackers he imagines the court room is attacked by Nazi soldiers and he flees in terror; the judge postpones the hearing. When Nicol moves in the house next door and is nice to him, Mark adds a new doll named after her to the village. Hogie falls in love with doll Nicol and they get married. In real life however, Nicol turns his proposal down. In Mark's fantasies, doll Nicol is killed by a Nazi which is in turn killed by Hogie. Dejah Thoris revives the Nazi and demands that Hogie comes with her to the far future in the time machine Mark built for her, but during a struggle Hogie discovers that the witch is actually a Nazi spy and Mark learns that she is the personification of his addiction to pills that he thinks are helping him. He throws the pills away, attends the court hearing and delivers his statement. He also agrees to attend the exhibition of his work and makes a date with his friend Roberta, who is a sales clerk at the hobby store where he gets his supplies.