please note: I don't think there are really any spoilers below - my comments are kept sufficiently vague so as to preclude giving anything away!
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...that this man's story ain't over yet and the film's rather downbeat conclusion, was, I felt, a bit premature, at best. Perhaps I'm overly optimistic (this is not something I'm ever accused of though, lemme point out) but I think better times outside of his backyard "town" await Mark Hogancamp in the big wide world.
And even if his life continues along the same lines . . . I have a problem with the film's ending on a more general level - even if the last line spoken comes straight from the horse's mouth - on account of the 'tragic' overtones resulting from its placement at the very end of the movie.
Typically in the case of portrayals of such "outsiders" as MH, there is, I suspect/feel, misplaced pity directed at such folks whose unconventional lives and choices might seem to the average person restrictive or even out and out depressing and pathetic. It seems to me, contrarily, that what a "special" person of this sort is up to in his private/fantasy dimension ought not so automatically to be "compared" to various facets of the lives of more ordinary people, finding it lacking. Rather, the art/therapy practice of a person like Mark Hogancamp should be envied as something extra, and extra special, in fact, which option, sadly, is denied most of your so-called average persons, consigned to what Thoreau famously referred to as "quiet desperation"! I, at any rate, do not feel so sorry for Mark Hogencamp, in spite of some of the rough circumstances that form the basis of his existence.
He certainly isn't devoid of charm. :)
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...that this man's story ain't over yet and the film's rather downbeat conclusion, was, I felt, a bit premature, at best. Perhaps I'm overly optimistic (this is not something I'm ever accused of though, lemme point out) but I think better times outside of his backyard "town" await Mark Hogancamp in the big wide world.
And even if his life continues along the same lines . . . I have a problem with the film's ending on a more general level - even if the last line spoken comes straight from the horse's mouth - on account of the 'tragic' overtones resulting from its placement at the very end of the movie.
Typically in the case of portrayals of such "outsiders" as MH, there is, I suspect/feel, misplaced pity directed at such folks whose unconventional lives and choices might seem to the average person restrictive or even out and out depressing and pathetic. It seems to me, contrarily, that what a "special" person of this sort is up to in his private/fantasy dimension ought not so automatically to be "compared" to various facets of the lives of more ordinary people, finding it lacking. Rather, the art/therapy practice of a person like Mark Hogancamp should be envied as something extra, and extra special, in fact, which option, sadly, is denied most of your so-called average persons, consigned to what Thoreau famously referred to as "quiet desperation"! I, at any rate, do not feel so sorry for Mark Hogencamp, in spite of some of the rough circumstances that form the basis of his existence.
He certainly isn't devoid of charm. :)