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Wisconsin Death Trip
James Marsh (USA/UK, Ripping Reality)
Friday, April 29, 11:45 p.m.
Bloor Cinema (506 Bloor Street West)
Monday, May 2, 9:30 p.m.
Innis Town Hall (2 Sussex Ave)
It’s always a bit dispiriting when your favourite film at a festival is part of a retrospective. But don’t blame James Marsh (who returns to Hot Docs this year with Project Nim, also very good) for the quality of his 1997 docudrama. Blame Hot Docs for shooting themselves in the foot, slotting in retrospectives that outstrip the rest of the program.
Adapted from Michael Lesy’s non-fiction book of the same name, Wisconsin Death Trip combines stark black-and-white photographs, similarly mannered reenactments, and bitter voiceover into a bleak but expressionistic look at Jackson County, Wisconsin at the turn of the twentieth century. Stories of compulsive vandalism, hermit-killings, uxoricide, ravings about anti-Catholic conspiracies, and recipes for sheep’s head stew form the fabric of Marsh’s north-central gothic fabling. There’s a glib and wonderful matter-of-factness to the narration of century-old newspaper headlines (delivered by Ian Holm) of countless murders and suicides that sets the tone for Marsh’s haunting debut feature.
The ghosts of these old stories and newspaper clippings haunt present-day Wisconsin, with shots of contemporary Jackson County capturing a palpable sense of that thing we call “Americana”—one which is recognizable, beautiful and spooky in the uncanny, David Lynch-y way. More than just ingenious in its conceit and construction, Wisconsin Death Trip is that rare kind of documentary that feels so thoroughly directed, with Marsh’s highly deliberate and stylized, yet graceful and gliding, camera movements befitting the odd, airy solemnity of Holm’s narration. Darkly funny and frequently moving, Marsh’s impressively moody film invests both the doldrums of small town American history and the documentary form with a morbid energy.