Inventive therapy

On an evening in April 2000, the life of 38-yearold Mark Hogancamp was forever altered.

After a night of drinking at a bar, during which Hogancamp had made the mistake of telling the wrong men that there was something different about him — that he sometimes liked to wear women’s shoes — he was attacked by these men, who essentially left him for dead in the middle of a road.

Hogancamp, a veteran of the U.S. Navy, was beaten so severely that he suffered severe memory loss and had to relearn basic skills such as eating, walking and reading. Once a talented illustrator, he no longer could draw well.

Eventually, Hogancamp largely healed his mental wounds in the creation of a 1:6-scale fictional World War II village, populated by a male doll that represented him as a military officer that he named Captain Hogancamp, aka “Hogie,” as well as various female dolls representing women who had meant something to him in the time following the accident and men who stood in for his real-life attackers.

Eventually, photos Hogancamp took of this village and its dolls in various situations led to an art show; an award-winning documentary in 2010, “Marwencol”; and, a few years later, “Welcome to Marwencol,” a 278page hardcover art and storybook.

And now comes “Welcome to Marwen,” director Robert Zemeckis’ heartwarming and largely satisfying dramatization of Hogancamp’s story, bolstered by a delicate performance by Steve Carell as the traumatized artist and some nicely executed visual effects that bring the Belgian village to life in a distinct way.

The film opens with the doll version of Carell’s Hogancamp flying a fighter plane in the skies above Belgium. He is shot down and, after replacing his fireravaged boots with a pair of women’s heels he finds, runs afoul of Nazi soldiers. After some verbal sparring, he kicks one in the man parts, but Hogie soon is overwhelmed by them and beaten. Fortunately, a ragtag group of female dolls arrives on the scene, guns down the Nazis and brings Hogie back to Marwen.

The camera pulls back to reveal Mark, taking a photo of Hogie with one of the female dolls, named Wendy after a woman who meant a great deal to him.

We will come to learn about the real women who have inspired the doll creations, including Anna (Gwendoline Christie of “Game of Thrones” and “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”), his Russian homecare worker who makes monthly visits and scolds him about eating enough and for taking too many pills; Julie (Janelle Monae of “Hidden Figures” and “Moonlight”), who worked with him during his rehab and insisted that he learned to love the pain that came with it; Suzette (Leslie Zemeckis, the wife of the director, who has appeared in a few of his recent films), an actress from Mark’s favorite adult videos; and Roberta (Merritt Wever of “Nurse Jackie” and “The Walking Dead”), who works at the hobby store where Mark gets his supplies and who asks him over for dinner.

Ah, but Mark has eyes only for Nicol (Leslie Mann), the redhead who moves into the house across the street. The kind woman takes an interest in Mark’s work and becomes a compassionate friend to him.

Mark is still dealing with dramatic stress-related episodes triggered by various stimuli that take him back to the attack, so he’d much rather escape to Marwen than, say, attend the fast-approaching sentencing hearing of his attackers or even an exhibition of his photographs at an art gallery.

The goings-on set in the not-all-that-historically accurate Marwen, which increasingly center around Hogie and Mark’s newest doll, the redheaded Nicol, become more and more involved. Zemeckis and his visual team apparently used a mix of old-school modeling and state-of-the-art effects for these sequences, which are fairly unusual and pretty impressive.

Hanging like a specter over both Mark and Hogie is another doll, Deja Thoris (Diane Kruger of “Inglourious Basterds” and “In the Fade”), the Belgian Witch of Marwen. Unlike the other dolls in “Welcome to Marwen,” Deja is an invention for the movie and feels every bit like it. Zemeckis and co-writer Caroline Thompson (“Edward Scissorhands,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas”) clearly believed they needed a physical representation of Mark’s problems, but it never feels like it belongs.

In fact, a big climactic Marwen sequence that involves Deja, while technically interesting, runs off the rails. (Zemeckis even chooses to include a carbased time machine, seemingly referencing his own 1985 hit “Back to the Future” in the oddest of places. It is really bizarre.) Otherwise, through, “Welcome to Marwen” is rather well-put-together.

Most importantly, you come to care about Mark, who has real admiration and adoration for women, which helps to explain his fondness for their shoes. He is a fascinating character, a testament no doubt to the real Hogancamp, the writers and, certainly, to the performance of Carell, impressive recently in “Beautiful Boy” and who also portrays former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in the upcoming Dick Cheney biopic “Vice.”