Steve Carell is such a doll
WElcOME tO MaRWEn Robert Zemeckis turns Steve Carell into a living doll…
Not only can’t I compare it to any film I’ve ever made, I can’t compare it to any film ever,” Robert Zemeckis tells Teasers of his latest film, Welcome To Marwen. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” Zemeckis has been known to hop genres and push the envelope technologically, but this could be something else entirely.
If you were to compare it to any other film, the most obvious counterpoint would be little-seen 2010 documentary Marwencol, which told the story of Mark Hogancamp, a photographer who suffered memory loss after a savage attack. He tried to make sense of his experiences by building a miniature WW2 village populated by dolls.
“I was channel-surfing,” recalls Zemeckis. “I came across a documentary, and I started watching it. And midway through the film, I literally stood up and finished watching the film, standing. I was instantly struck at that moment, and I thought, ‘This is a magnificent story that could be adapted as a compelling film story.’”
Zemeckis saw potential when it came to creating the imaginary stories that Mark was concocting in his head while he was photographing these elaborate dioramas. It was also an
opportunity for the director to revisit the performance-capture tech he had pioneered on The Polar Express and later in Beowulf and A Christmas Carol, to create Mark’s ‘Captain Hoagie’ alter-ego and the doll friends representing people he knows in real-life, including Nicol (Leslie Mann) and Julie (Janelle Monáe).
“All the dolls are driven by human actors, and there’s no animation involved,” says Zemeckis of the mo-cap process, and he can’t stifle a laugh when he explains the importance of making these ‘plastic’ figures able to convey emotion. “Creating the dolls in a way so that they could completely emote human emotion was the mission,” he chuckles.
Marwen marks Zemeckis’ first collaboration with Steve Carell, and he cast the chameleonic actor for his ability to do both comedy and drama. “He could give us the fun swagger of when he’s playing Captain Hoagie, and then the emotional power of when he’s playing the Mark character when he’s broken. He had to be able to do both.”
With Zemeckis estimating that the mo-cap doll scenes account for approximately 40 per cent of the run time, it was essential that the tech was up to scratch. But while the Back To The Future director predicts we’ll see completely realistic virtual actors within four or five years, the lure here was “a very powerful human story, and that’s the thing I’m always looking for”.
“I loved the idea of the healing power of art,” adds Zemeckis. “And the vital mission of art to help us make sense of parts of life that don’t make much sense. That’s what appealed to me beyond anything.”