Wisconsin Death Trip

(1999) Written and directed by James Marsh; Based on the book, Wisconsin Death Trip, by Michael Lesy; Starring: Ian Holm, Jeffrey Golden and Jo Vukelich; Available on DVD 

Rating: **** 

“…I was looking for stories that cut across 100 years and resonated with contemporary anxieties about guns, or religion, or drug-taking. I thought that was an important way of making the film more contemporary in its concerns.” – James Marsh (from DVD commentary)

When folks pine away for the “good old days,” what they really mean is they long for a mythical, presumably simpler time when things were safer and everyone knew their neighbors. The reality is a different proposition altogether. Beneath the Norman Rockwell-esque exterior of American small-town life, we see a microcosm of the same problems that have plagued our society since its inception. Basing his film on the 1973 book Wisconsin Death Trip by Michael Lesy, documentarian James Marsh set his sights on the town of Black River Falls, Wisconsin, and some of the more sordid events that occurred there between 1890 and 1900. Told through newspaper articles of the time, Wisconsin Death Trip shatters the myth that late 19^th century America was anything but peaceful and idyllic, painting a portrait of madness, violence and murder.

 

Shot in Wisconsin over an 18-month period, the film starts and ends with winter and the harsh weather conditions that become the backdrop for the various stories. Ian Holm narrates, providing a voice for Black River Fall’s English immigrant editor, Frank Cooper, who observed and wrote about the grim events. Marsh bridged vintage photographs with 16 mm black and white footage, recreating the look and feel of the old photos. The film’s only color scenes provide brief glimpses of modern-day Black River Falls and its inhabitants. In contrast to the real photographs and filmed re-enactments,* the contemporary scenes purvey a stereotypical slice of Americana with a parade, high school prom, and trick or treaters ready for a night of begging for candy. Another scene undercuts this joyful mythos, with a barbershop quartet performing to a group of bored senior citizens – a captive audience in an assisted living facility. In the context of the morbid stories of the town’s past, we’re left to speculate about what secrets lie just beneath the surface. 

* Fun Fact #1: Marsh purposely wanted to seamlessly juxtapose the vintage photos with recreations of the events, so the viewer couldn’t easily distinguish what was real and what was fabricated.

 

Many of the stories in Wisconsin Death Trip are worthy of a horror movie. We see some of the stories behind the tombstones of individuals who died long before their time. With childhood mortality (often due to bouts of diptheria) rampant, grieving families kept their kids’ memories alive with post-mortem photography (also known as “memorial photography”). To modern eyes, the photos may seem ghoulish, but they were an important reminder of loved ones gone by – a memento mori for the living. While memorial photography may be a somber curio from the past many of the topics that were salient back then are sadly just as relevant today. The story of a 14-year-old boy and his younger brother who killed a farmer with a stolen rifle, or a jilted suitor who shoots his former girlfriend before turning the weapon on himself remind us that gun violence was and remains a ubiquitous part of the American landscape 

Black River Falls was predominately settled by German and Norwegian immigrants who brought their values and customs with them. A hallmark of the settlers was their unflappable stoicism amidst tough times. Depression and despair, commonly associated with widespread unemployment and poverty, sometimes resulted in desperate measures, such as the example of a despondent man who calmly laid down next to a stick of dynamite to blow his own head off. Murder, suicide and abuse were not uncommon occurrences in the town. One of the most curious traditions brought over from the old country was the practice of bringing along a rooster to help search for a drowning victim, with the rooster’s crows heralding the location of the missing body.

The sameness and boredom typified by small town life contributed to a number of eccentrics who shook things up. Consider the strange case of mother and schoolteacher Mary Sweeney (portrayed in several vignettes by Jo Vukelich) who experienced an abrupt shift in her personality after suffering a bump on the head. While in a cocaine induced semi-fugue state, she would smash windows around towns, although she claimed the drug “calmed her nerves.” A teenage girl, burned down the barns of two of her employers to express her dissatisfaction, and a middle-aged opera singer who once toured Europe constructed a stage in the middle of the woods for her performances. More often than not, this erratic behavior led to their internment at the local mental hospital.* 

* Fun Fact #2: The mental asylum featured in the film was a working institution.

Wisconsin Death Trip reminds us how normal life then and now can be monotonous, punctuated by events that force us to take notice. Dark and sometimes darkly funny, the film illustrates how outliers have always captured our attention. The kind of occurrences that made headlines then are the same kind of stuff that makes headlines now – everything trivial and significant (and anything in-between) becomes a form of public record. Thanks to phone cameras and easy access to the internet, anyone can get their fill of similarly morbid and bizarre stories to those presented in the film with a few clicks of a mouse. Wisconsin Death Trip not only lays bare our insatiable appetite for lurid news, but suggests even the most innocuous places can harbor the darkest secrets.

 

Sources for this article: DVD commentary by writer/director James Marsh and director of photography Eigil Bryld