People who have woken up from comas have said that they felt like they were barely there. They’ve said they couldn’t focus on anything, couldn’t make sense of what they were seeing, their speech was mutilated and disturbingly slow, flat, and mangled. Their brains were working, but working painfully slow. Some experience memory loss, many get their memory back after a while, while others don’t. Unfortunately, Mark Hogancamp falls into that latter category. And in the new trailer for “Welcome to Marwen,” we see just how Mark handled his life post-coma.
The story follows Mark, played by Steve Carell, who was beaten and left for dead outside a bar in his hometown of Kingston, NY and when he awoke from his coma, he had no memory of the thirty-eight prior years of his life, including his ex-wife, family, artistic talents, or military service. If you woke from a nine-day coma and couldn’t remember anything about your life, what would you do?
While there are a variety of ways to try to regain your memory after a traumatic experience or coma, Mark found solace in his own unique way during his recovery process. To reconstruct his past, he built, in his backyard, Marwencol, an imaginary village set in World War II Belgium, where everybody is welcome—Germans, Americans, French, British, and Russians—as long as peace is kept.
In 2010, filmmaker Jeff Malmberg released a documentary, “Marwencol,” on Mark’s experiences. This year, based on the aforementioned documentary and the 2015 best-selling book, “Welcome to Marwencol,” filmmaker Robert Zemeckis will be releasing a film based on the incredible story.
“Welcome to Marwen” stars Carell in the lead role alongside Eiza González, Diane Kruger, Leslie Mann, and Janelle Monáe. The screenplay was written by Caroline Thompson and Robert Zemeckis.
The film is set to be released on November 21.
