A world of his own: Marwencol, a great documentary about outsider art

In the tradition of really fine documentaries about really odd people and events (Dear Zachary, The Staircase, to name two) let's add Jeff Malmberg's Marwencol (2010) to the list - a terrific, thoughtful, respectful look at the totally strange world of Mark Hogancamp who was severely beaten outside a bar in his impoverished upstate New York town and, over the years of recovery from serious brain injury, faces his trauma and adjusts, in a way, to the world around him by literally building an entire fantasy world from scrap lumber and populated with plastic dolls that represent him and the various people in his life. Hogancamp's world is set in the imaginary Belgian village of Marwencol during World War II, and involves conflicts between the GIs (including a heroic soldier doll who is Mark) and German SS troops; the village is populated as well by 27 Barbie dolls, each with a name and personality and role and many modeled on people he knows from town and from the restaurant where he works for a few hours each week. The whole concept is on one level amazingly creepy - Mark has a complex fantasy life with the dolls that represent various women in town - and also on another level sweet and therapeutic. He seems incredibly nice and kind to all of the people he knows in town, and they are willing to put up with his peculiarities and apparently honored to be represented in his village (though one woman understandably  upset when her character is shot to death). What brings this to a higher level: Hogancamp is a fantastic "outsider" artist, whose photographs of the life of his village are absolutely outstanding - he has a terrific sense of composition and a director's sense of how to stage dramatic scenes among his dolls and within his settings. Ultimately, his work gets "discovered" by a photographer living nearby and is displayed in a Village gallery, to some acclaim - which sits uneasily on Hogancamp's shoulders. The scenes of his preparing for the exhibit and his travel to NYC are quite powerful - actually, everything in this documentary is powerful and disturbing and also reassuring in some way about the healing powers of art.

One other note: Tried to watch Compliance but could not get past 30 minutes or so, despite the fine, understated acting: takes place in a fast-food restaurant where a prank caller pretending to be a cop gets the manager to hold an employee in a back room and strip search her on suspicion that she may have stole $ from a customers. Apparently some events much like this actually happened in a McDonalds in Kentucky, but that doesn't make it any more watchable as a movie: it seemed so far-fetched and ridiculous; even though there may be some twists at the end, it's impossible for me to believe these characters would go through with the actions as depicted (maybe would have worked better if the suspect were not so obviously a mature and pretty young woman - maybe she should have been much more vulnerable?).