Marwencol
Cinema Guild | Release Date: October 8, 2010 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
82
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 18 Critic Reviews
Positive:
17
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Los Angeles TimesKevin ThomasOct 25, 2013
Watching Marwencol, Jeff Malmberg's probing documentary on Hogancamp's undertaking, is an exhilarating, utterly unique experience. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeTy BurrDec 7, 2010
A strange and very beautiful documentary about the gray area between obsession and art. Read full review
91
Portland OregonianStan HallOct 24, 2013
One of the most affecting true-life character studies in quite some time. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
This tender documentary considers the mysteries of both art and coping. Read full review
90
Chicago ReaderJ.R. JonesJan 13, 2011
This moving documentary sidesteps the usual art-world debates over the authenticity and legitimacy of outsider work; instead director Jeff Malmberg simply immerses us in Hogancamp's world, just as Hogancamp immerses himself in the title town and its horrors. Read full review
90
Village VoiceMichael Atkinson
Exactly the sort of mysterious and almost holy experience you hope to get from documentaries and rarely do, Jeff Malmberg's Marwencol is something like a homegrown slice of Herzog oddness, complete with true-crime backfill and juicy metafictive upshot. Read full review
90
The New York TimesJeannette Catsoulis
Four years in the making, Marwencol emerges as a number of things: an absorbing portrait of an outsider artist; a fascinating journey from near-death to active life; a meditation on the brain's ability to forge new pathways when old ones have been destroyed. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaOct 24, 2013
Marwencol is about Hogancamp and his miniature alter-ego, about his photographs and his creative process. But it is also, on a deeper level, about how we process our experiences - good and bad, violent and mysterious - and how we try to build safe places in our lives. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsDec 17, 2010
Hogancamp's alliance with director Jeff Malmberg in this artful and poignant film marks a victory in the war against the self. Read full review
80
VoxAlissa WilkinsonDec 20, 2018
Marwencol brings you into Hogancamp’s world as a guest, and as his story slowly unfolds, you come to understand what these stories really mean to him and to his mental health. It’s a quiet, extraordinary film. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayDec 9, 2010
At its heart, it's about the communities we forge - real and imagined - to save our own lives. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleWalter AddiegoDec 7, 2010
If you have even a passing interest in outsider art, you owe it to yourself to see Marwencol. Read full review
75
New York PostV.A. Musetto
First-time director Jeff Malmberg tells Hogancamp's fascinating story with sensitivity, never resorting to exploitation. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubNoel Murray
Jeff Malmberg's documentary Marwencol is at its best when it focuses on Hogancamp's little world, and lets the artist walk the viewer through his town's increasingly dense mythology. Read full review
70
VarietyPeter Debruge
Hogancamp is a complex character, and Marwencol introduces the man in layers, creating an incomplete yet sympathetic portrait specialty audiences and hipsters can agree on. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreJun 20, 2018
As one publisher says enthusiastically of Hogancamp’s work, “There’s no irony in it.” That’s true of the movie, which sorely lacks context and authority in trumpeting these photos of bloodied GI Joes as more than what they were intended, as therapy for a wounded man and his obsessed vision of a world where the wrongs that happened to him can be made right. Read full review
63
Orlando SentinelRoger MooreMar 2, 2011
Hogancamp seems a pleasant, offbeat and intuitive fellow who probably takes all this less seriously than those who "discovered" him. Read full review
60
Time OutDavid Fear
When it comes to capturing the man behind the phenomenon, however, the film never progresses beyond a superficial, weird-yet-wonderful portraiture. Read full review
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