Wisconsin Death Trip
by James Marsh
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DVD details
Actor: Ian Holm, Jeffrey Golden, Jo Vukelich, Marcus Monroe, Marilyn WhiteDirector: James Marsh
Brand: Image Entertainment
Producer: James Marsh
Writer: James Marsh
Producer: Anthony Wall
Producer: Carl Hirschi
Producer: Maureen A. Ryan
Producer: Nancy Abraham
Writer: Michael Lesy
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Anamorphic, Black & White, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 76 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-02-24
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Home Vision Entertainment
DVD Reviews of Wisconsin Death Trip
DVD Review: Not as it was described ...
Summary: 3 Stars
In a fit of morbid fascination with "collective insanity" along with my love of history of nineteenth century small town America, I watched this "documentary." It was not at all as it was described.
This film is a collection of photos and reenactments of weird things that happened over a period of almost twenty years in a small portion of Wisconsin. And after each segment (about 15 minutes for each season, which the seasons did not make sense anyways because this film spanned several decades not a year in this town, causing some confusion, probably in an attempt to make this place look crazier than it was/is) a brightly modern color insert of how things are a century later makes the film even less interesting. Given the lack of organization and vision, I guess it would be difficult to characterize this film or explain it aptly, but every "description" I read is still vague or misleading.
The collection of photos and the stories told are interesting, but if you want more than a mere voyeuristic snippet of some of the more fiendish personalities of rural Americana this is not going to be good enough.
If this film was trying to say this county was crazy then, and is still crazy now, it made a pretty weak and incoherent argument. Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer are muttered during one of the color segments of Black River "today," and frankly I think that is quite a stretch. This area is not anything extraordinary when it comes to murder, insanity, or just plain rural weirdness. It could have been an interesting case study, but it was treated as a freak town that has never gotten better. Which begs the question, why does anyone still live there? If this is really a hotbed for insanity and moral/criminal corruption, shouldn't it be condemned and abandoned?
I think the book (which I have yet to get my hands on) would probably be better if you just want to see some of these photos and read the newspaper clippings. This was a pathetic attempt to draw loose and ridiculous conclusions and do it under the guise of "documentary" to give it some credibility. Do not waste your time.
DVD Review: Jackson County Blues
Summary: 4 Stars
Having achieved cult notoriety since its first publication in 1973, Michael Lesy's "Wisconsin Death Trip" plumbed the nineteenth century's abject, turbulent final decade in Black Water Falls, Wisconsin and other locations in Jackson County, utilizing a wealth of morbid glass plate negatives and disturbing press clippings of historical record to chronicle a period in the state's history that was largely miserable. Unemployment, disease, madness, alcoholism, religious fervor and brutal crime resulting from all of these factors was expertly exhibited in Lesy's harrowing presentation.
"Wisconsin Death Trip" never needed a film adaptation, and it could be said that the book is ill-suited to the medium. So, it's a surprise to see that James Marsh has produced a picture of considerable interest from the book's content. Unfortunately, the film relies on too few of the many extraordinary photographs that Charles Van Schaick shot during the period (which serve as the entirety of the book's illustrations), relying instead on re-enactments. Fortunately, these scenes are, despite a few exceptions, ably performed and beautifully rendered in lush black-and-white. Many violent, depraved and tragic events, as well as a few of fleeting delight, are portrayed and arranged in a seasonal order, and each season's sequence is concluded with vibrant color footage of Black River Falls a century later, depicting a comparably subdued 1990s locale.
Those familiar with the book know what kind of misery they'll be witness to, though the execution of these re-enactments are often surprising for the initiated. Just as the hyperbole of the book is in some portions nearly ludicrous, so too do some scenes flirt with melodrama; the whispered voice-over of an insane asylum clerk crosses the line from creepiness into silliness. However, the pace of this film is imbued with such remarkable momentum; Marsh has arranged many of the book's most exceptional incidents in a way that retains the viewer's attention.
The greatest achievements of this project are to be found in its cinematography and editing. Without its gorgeous photography and fastidiously organized sequences, "Wisconsin Death Trip" would be intriguing, but nowhere near so engaging to the eye. Holm's narration is very fine; he affects the dialect of the period capably, and as a result, his own voice is barely recognizable.
The proceedings are scored by the music of Bach, Offenbach, Schumann, Rachmaninoff, P?rt and one of this reviewer's favorite pieces, the "In Paradisum" of Faur?'s Requiem, which closes the film.
Home Vision produced quite a few very good DVD editions, and this is one of them. Audiovisual quality throughout is excellent. The main menu is uncluttered and easy to navigate, featuring a montage of shots from the film in the background. Scene selections are comprised of two title lists.
The commentary track voiced by Marsh and cinematographer Egil Bryld is of minor interest. While these two haven't sparking personalities and the track is hardly entertaining, their exhaustive discussion of every aspect of the film's production yields plenty of information.
Four brief deleted scenes, the first two of which are narrated by someone other than Holm, are included among the special features. Considering their brevity and quality, it seems odd that they were omitted from the film's succinct final cut.
A featurette entitled "Midwestern Gothic" is another special feature of moderate quality. Interviews with cast and crew and on-set footage provide an insider glimpse of the movie's production, but there's really little to see here that isn't thoroughly explained in the commentary track.
DVD Review: Photos of dead people, sad and disrespectful....
Summary: 1 Stars
I thought that this "documentary" sounded great. It's not. Private photos of children's dead bodies, poorly reenacted suicides, and a dry narrator reading old healdlines, made this awful for me. Very broad definiations of insanity, alcholism, and no antibodics is the story here. Which could have been spun in a good but still interesting way, like look how far we've come, instead of taking a small town's troubles and trying to make an X-file like documentery. Bad....DVD Review: I think the townsfolk saw the documentary
Summary: 2 Stars
Based upon authentic yet dry turn of the century (1890-1900) news reports from Black River Falls, a small town in northern Wisconsin, "Wisconsin Death Trip" is a brutally slow, albeit odd trek through the various details of seeming insanity affecting the area. Interwoven with the century-old pictures shot by a professional photographer named Charles Van Schaik, fairly recent video footage is juxtaposed to display advancement and normalcy of today's Black River Falls. The old photos have a creepy tone considering several are at funerals of dead infants and toddlers, and the rest clearly display the harsh differences between contemporary life and that of folks 100 years ago.
It's probably safe to say that the majority of the unanticipated "insanity" was caused by the stressors of ignorance, poor education, religious intolerance, and xenophobia. Some jilted lovers committed suicide - which was considered by at least one judge to be an untreatable condition - while others were committed to the insane asylum, a fix-all, end-all cure for confused physicians of the day. It's clear that the doctors in the area knew nothing about Circadian cycles, or anything really, considering the number of people who were depressed and/or crazy, and another who was buried on accident. Of course, several conditions were lumped under what was called malignant diphtheria, something that led to the deaths among several children.
All of this is enough, but when superstition and religion brought about talk of witches, vexations, devils, Ouija boards, and something called the "criminal ear", it's understandable that there are problems with young people and to the town elders, just about everything is evil or crazy in some way.
With all of that said, there was some generally strange stuff happening during that time. Call it dementia, insanity, delirium, or just plain crazy, it's hard to explain the fact that during that short period of time there were multiple suicides, a man who tried to get a train to run him over, a man who took a nap and used lit dynamite as a pillow, widespread infidelity, multiple children who murdered relatives and locals with pistol shots, and several brutal murders of infants and toddlers - specifically a woman who drowned her children in a fit of insanity like Andrea Yates.
I can't say for sure why any of the events happened, and the documentary doesn't really go into an explanation, but if the past events and mass murderers Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer are an indication, there's either something in the water, or living in Wisconsin simply causes insanity. As a Chicago Bears fan, I'll go with the latter theory.
DVD Review: Tedious, Condescending......
Summary: 1 Stars
I have never read the book this documentary was inspired by but the subject matter of a real life town plagued by disaster and insanity near the turn of the last century sure sounded interesting. Unfortunately the movie is quite tedious with long drawn out shots and scenes that are so slow I once had to check the DVD player to see if I had paused it by mistake. I don't know much about Wisconsin but I can read a map and see that contrary to the impression the filmmakers try to make the weird events reported in this story took place throughout the state often well over a hundred miles from the town of Black River Falls which is the film's focus. And are the Wisconsin murders, suicides, premature deaths, commitments to "insane asylums" etc really even all that unusual for the time period or any time period? I can remember hearing local stories of equally tragic and unusual proportions from both of my grandmothers who lived their lives in rural Ohio and Maryland. Yet the filmmakers don't try to draw any conclusions about the universality of the stories but focus instead on perpetuating a viewpoint that the Black Rivers Falls area is cursed (by the Winnebago Indians perhaps?).
The reenactments of the stories reminded me of "features" local television news shows often come up with during "sweeps months" to boost their ratings. These historic reenactments come complete with spooky sound effects, chilling music and an ominous narrator who speaks in a sinister whisper when reading the circumstances of an inmate at the state's insane asylum. All of the historic scenes are shot in black and white but there is some color film used that shows modern small town Wisconsin. The portion of the documentary that shows these rather ordinary pleasant people (some in nursing homes) seems to be intent in showing the present day folks are as "unusual" as their forebears and this portion of the film is both condescending and offensive.
Description of Wisconsin Death Trip
Inspired by the Michael Lesy book of the same name, Wisconsin Death Trip is an intimate, shocking, and sometimes hilarious account of the disasters that befell one small town in Wisconsin during the 1890s. The town of Black River Falls is gripped by a peculiar malaise and the weekly news accounts are dominated by bizarre talk of madness, eccentricity, and violence amongst the local population. Suicide and murder are commonplace, and people are haunted by ghosts, possessed by devils, and terrorized by teenage outlaws and arsonists.Featuring music by Debussy, Blind Mellon Jefferson, John Cale, and DJ Shadow. Narrated by Ian Holmes.
Inspired by the cult-favorite book by Michael Lesy, Wisconsin Death Trip is an eerily dreamlike film about the moral, spiritual, and physical collapse of a small American town in the 1890s. Stricken by economic depression, harsh winters, and a diphtheria epidemic that decimated the local infant population, the citizens of Black River Falls, Wisconsin--primarily German and Norwegian immigrants hoping for a better life in America--fell victim to a rising tide of insanity, murder, arson, and moral breakdown. By creating moody black-and-white reenactments of the horrid events chronicled in Lesy's book (which includes the haunting vintage photographs of the town's official photographer), director James Marsh conveys, through chilling detachment and the subtly sardonic narration by Ian Holm, the impression of sly bemusement, as if Black River Falls was preordained by fate to become a village of the damned. It's both fiendishly macabre and yet strangely compelling, weakened only by Marsh's suggestion (through color sequences of present-day Wisconsin) that things have never really changed since those creepy, ill-fated days when death was seemingly everywhere. Apart from that half-baked attempt at irony, Wisconsin Death Trip is a film you won't soon forget. --Jeff Shannon
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