Tatvam Productions

Running With Scissors, by first-time director, Ryan Murphy, is hard to watch. Based on the best-selling autobiography with the same title, by Augusten Burroughs, it was the first movie in a long time that I wanted to walk out of. There were so many times, I said, “Ok, that’s it! Why the heck am I watching this??” and then I forced myself to continue watching, hoping I’d learn something. There was a moment in the movie when one of the characters goes on a rampage of things he hates – I hate X and I hate Y and I hate how blah, blah. The woman next to me said “I hate this movie”. Pretty much summed it up.

Ok, fine, hate is a strong word. There one fabulous thing about this movie. The acting. Annette Bening is BRILLIANT. More than brilliant, if possible. She will most definitely get an Oscar nomination and may quite possibly win as well. Jill Clayburgh was brilliant. More than brilliant if possible. She may get an Oscar nomination. Evan Rachel Woods was exceptional. You get the drift – across the board, the acting was truly wonderful. Brian Cox, Alec Baldwin, Gwyneth Paltrow and Joseph Fiennes were all very good. And newbie Joseph Cross, who plays Augusten Burroughs, more than held his own in this tough role.

So why then did I dislike the film? It was not because it was a dark and difficult topic (which it clearly was). Augusten Burroughs had a very tough life. The break up of the marriage of his bi-polar mother Diedre (Annette Bening) and alcoholic father Norman (Alec Baldwin) leaves him at the mercy of his mother’s shrink, the dislikable Dr. Finch (Brian Cox). Dr. Finch is seemingly a creepy Good Samaritan who takes in various stray children, but it soon becomes apparent that there is more going here. Dr. Finch has a history of adopting kids who seem to have rich parents and using all the money earmarked for the kids to maintain the house and his lifestyle. He also uses his kids (biological and adopted) by pimping them out to older adults, as in the case of Natalie (Evan Rachel Woods), where he let her have a relationship with a 41 year old man when she was 13 and used her scholarship fund from said pedophile to pay for his house.

Anyway, into Dr. Finch’s house and crazy family, Augusten is abandoned. He becomes friends with the disturbed Natalie and warily stays away from often psychotic Hope (Gwyneth Paltrow), who starves her cat to death by keeping it under a laundry hamper for four days because God told her to. He also enters into a gay relationship with the disturbed Bookman (Joseph Fiennes), another of Dr. Finch’s adopted kids, who happens to be in his mid thirties when Augusten is in his mid-teens. Oh, of course, Dr. Finch knows of the affair, but does not protest. Instead he tells Augusten that in order for him to allow Augusten to stop going to school, Augusten needs to be suicidal and encourages him to try to kill himself. Which of course, he does.

Crazy? Yes. Definitely. Through all this, I am not sure how Augusten maintains a shred of sanity, but he does, primarily by writing in journal on a daily basis. He also forms a quiet bond with Agnes (Jill Clayburgh), Dr. Finch’s unkempt wife, who lives a life of quiet desperation and is more of a mother to him than Diedre ever was. On his frequent visits home to Diedre, we see a constantly deteriorating woman, who’s drugs, delusions of grandeur and dependence on Dr. Finch form a dangerous cocktail that results in frequent psychotic episodes.

Yes, this movie is odd and dark and depressing. But that’s not why I dislike it. I dislike it because it gives the audience no space to breathe. Ryan Murphy has taken all the most dramatic scenes from the book (or so it seems, since I haven’t read it) and strung them together into the movie. Impactful? Sure, but it is all highs, all the time. There are no soft moments, no moments of quiet introspection. Ok, there is one – with Agnes, but only one! The audience is forced to jump from one huge, dramatic revelation to the next. Characters are screaming and shouting in almost every scene. Every scene in the two-hour movie is dramatic and eventful and packed with information, action, and emotion – primarily despair.

You didn’t really bond with any of the characters, you didn’t get a chance to have a quiet moment with any of them. You didn’t get a chance to catch your breath. You were constantly uncomfortable, at the edge of your seat (in a bad way) wondering who was going to yell or try suicide or homicide.

It was just too much. Way too much. Ryan Murphy needs to learn the art of the light touch even with heavy material. You don’t need to bang the audience over the head with the content, visuals and music at every single moment.

While the movie has an inbuilt audience with the readers of the book, a New York Times bestseller, I would not recommend anyone voluntarily subjects themselves to this movie.