Marwencol (2010)

Directed by Jeff Malmberg

This is a documentary about the work of Mark Hogancamp. He lives in Kingston, NY, one of those old milltowns up the river from NYC. He lives in a permanently fixed prefab trailer type home.
He makes detailed WWII type scenes with dolls in the yard outside his trailer. He does this to deal with his loneliness, which might have always been a part of his life, but is now much worse because of brain damage and emotional trauma he suffered after a vicious attack by 5 men outside a Kingston bar. Before this happened he didn’t do that type of work. He shows some old notebooks before drawings. He says he can’t draw anymore.
He works out the trauma of his attack by creating scenarios of the SS dolls attacking and torturing the doll character of himself.

He has an interesting story to tell and does. He is on camera talking a lot throughout the movie.
One might wonder though how this is all done. The documentary doesn't go into any detail. All the dolls have excellent uniforms, they have small rifle replicas, (“This is a BAR.”) even the faces seem more expressive than just Barbie, Ken, or GI Joe dolls, but maybe that is a projection of a viewer seeing them in the settings with full costumes and movie still placement setups for the photos he takes.
Where did the costumes come from? Is he making them himself? Where does he buy all this stuff?
Nevertheless it’s an interesting film. In the hate filled USA, he survived and made something of himself with reasons to go on. Good for him. 

There is a feature film with Steve Carell playing Mark Hogancamp. Mediaglut has not seen this, just the documentary, and probably won’t bother watching it either.