Wisconsin Death Trip

'Nowhere in this great continent of ours can be found a more desirable residence.' This is a pitch for the small town of Black River Falls, Wisconsin. If by any chance you've already accepted this seemingly ordinarily little exaggeration as the truth, then its time you saw a melancholic little documentary called Wisconsin Death Trip.

This is a film which details the events that occurred in Black River Falls during the 1890s and is the director James Marsh's take on the 1970s literary cult classic of the same name, written by Michael Lesy. It seems that the whole town was besieged by fits of suicide, murder, lunacy and several inexplicable and bizarre events that could have been plucked cleanly from an Edward Gory poem. The grim and dark character of this strange little town and its inhabitants are communicated through photographs taken at the time and newspaper reports. The photos are connected to starkly beautiful black and white recreations of the odd goings-on of Black River Falls. Ian Holm narrates the film in a haunting and sometimes blackly comic manner, and a few records from the local insane asylum are whispered disturbingly, telling us about the many inhabitants who were committed there. The recreations are shot with dazzling fluidity, all are stunning to watch and every single one shocks or horrifies to an enthralling degree.

Like Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream, this twisted tale takes place over several seasons and the other-worldly events just keep on happening; from a farmer who blew his own head off with dynamite to a 63 year old-14 year old paedophilliac marriage, they seem never-ending as the depressing Wisconsin Winter looms over the horizon. There are certain characters who keep reappearing throughout the film such as the 13 year old who shot an old man for fun and then participated in a western style chase and gun fight with a posse, and the has-been opera singer, Pauline L'Allemand, who moved to Black River Falls and slowly went mad, hearing voices from the spirit world and ended up in the Mendota Asylum for the Insane.

It is the morbid fascination that resides in some of us which makes us want to watch this to the end, to see just how tantalizingly strange the events in this town can get. The macabre style is pulled off with perfection; it is often grisly and melancholic to watch and yet I was fascinated by it and soaked up every moment. Wisconsin Death Trip fails, however in trying to convince us that Black River Falls hasn't changed since the 1890s. Its attempts (in colour, rather than black and white like the rest of the film), are rather forced and unsatisfying. But the blank, placid faces of the old people of the modern day town are certainly reminiscent of the photos taken back at the end of the 19th century. Perhaps the sheer number of the events at the time makes the film a little unbelievable, but it is the photos which remind us that these events actually took place and aid in bringing home the Gothic and demented atmosphere of the whole tragic tale.

The truth is: I was horrified and engrossed in the story of this freakish town and the maniacs who resided there. Then, after thinking about it, I realized that the crimes of passion, suicides and gun violence of our so-called 'modern society' were happening over a century ago. I believe that this is one of the most significant points James Marsh was trying to put across.

However, there are still some out and out undeniably weird happenings that took place in Black River Falls which would leave us utterly aghast if we saw them in the present day. When viewing, be sure to look out for the Polish girl who set fire to numerous buildings because she was 'lonely and homesick and needed some excitement.' and especially Mary Sweeney, with her window smashing antics.

The film is based on newspaper articles and photos, which is surely why it is so emotionally detached from its subjects, but it is simply not possible to have absolutely no emotional connection to any of the characters and remain interested in hearing about their deaths for two hours. It becomes tedious after the first 20 minutes and almost unbearable after 45. The main reoccuring characters -- a whispering mental hospital clerk and a woman who compulsively breaks windows -- are given no personality at all, only roles to perform, and only add to the problem. While well-shot, this movie is dull, plodding, and the worst kind of bad movie: it doesn't even attempt to entertain you, it just drags you along, waiting for the end.

Some seem to have missed the whole point of this engrossing documentary. I wouldn't normally regard myself as a documentary person but this film is stylistically excellent using period photographs and specially shot black and white footage mixed in with colour shots of the town of Black River Falls (which the movie examines at the turn of the century) as it is now. To put it bluntly, and I don't feel I'm spoiling anything by saying this, the population is suffering from insanity ranging from the homicidal to the simply inexplicable. Ian Holm provides a haunting narration culled entirely from the local newspaper of the day and this is interspersed with excerpts from the records of the local asylum to which many of the towns inhabitants are committed.

The story is one of collapse as harsh victorian values prove incapable of dealing with the economic and social conditions the town is experiencing. The towns inhabitants are simply incapable of dealing with their circumstances. Suicide and mania are the results.

An excellent film let down almost not at all by the slightly banal comparisons made between the town in its victorian 'glory' and its modern status as a crime capital which falls a little flat but is not without interest. Proof of the effect of environment on psychology.

Wisconsin Death Trip is a beautifully filmed, lyrical look at the underside of human existence in Black River Falls, Wisconsin during the late Victorian era, cross-cut with color images of Black River Falls one hundred years hence (1997). Told with still photographs, renactments, narrators, Wisconsin Death Trip will certainly shock moviegoers who long for the 'good old days' when we lived in close-knit small towns (or farms), life was simple, immigrants were hard working, family farmers were successful, and children always obeyed their parents.

WDT shows us, often graphically, that murder, madness, crime, drug and alcohol abuse, arson, bad children, guns, superstitions, poverty, ignorance, adultery, and fears about old age have always been with us and perhaps will always be with us.

The only negative comment I can make is about the veracity of the 'documentary'. Many of the events that were reported in the movie to have occurred in the pages of the Black River Falls newspaper occurred in other places - Beaver Dam and Poynette are much further south, Appleton is much further east, Eau Claire and Rhinelander further north, and the state mental hospital in Mendota is in Madison. The river and the sandstone bluffs are near the Wisconsin Dells; beautiful, in Wisconsin, but not near Black River Falls.

Anyway, I think that for such a beautifully photographed film such as this, it is minor quibble. Wisconsin Death Trip is the movie you would get if Fellini, an absurdist and grandmaster of black and white film, had worked with Bergman, with his dour humanism and northern European sensibilities.

Loved it. My family came from Wisconsin; wish they had used some of our family stories.

Unapologetically dark. Unashamedly morbid and moody. This documentary offers an alternative, more realistic, depiction of American life at the turn of the twentieth century. Mundane elements of work, love, marriage, and simple existence in the American North are swept up in an undercurrent of darkness that reminds the viewer that history is not all presidents, education, and industry. This documentary offers both sides of life, not just the common, brightly lit portion that is outlined in popular media and historical documents. This is all not to say, however, that the film is oppressive or grotesque: accounts of insanity, murder, and tragedy are intermixed with elements of black humor and sarcasm. Well worth the hour-and-a-half running time.