Review: ‘Running With Scissors’ captures dark truths of memoir

Directed by: Ryan Murphy

Starring: Annette Bening, Joseph Cross, Brian Cox, Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes, Evan Rachel Wood, Alec Baldwin, Jill Clayburgh

Rated: R

Why is it that movies about dysfunctional families – and “families” isn’t confined to groups of blood relations – capture our imaginations so?

The modern era of this phenomenon began in 1975 with the release of Milos Forman’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” The ensemble cast was brilliant and, to a character, utterly dysfunctional. They seemed to make a connection with regular folks, though. The film was a commercial success and swept the five major Oscar categories, winning for best actor, best actress, best director, best screenplay and best picture.

Since then there have been a number of great cinematic inquests into what makes a collective mind tick with an irregular cadence.

“American Beauty,” “Pieces of April,” “The Royal Tenenbaums” and recently the gentlest of the bunch, “Little Miss Sunshine,” are great examples.

Director Ryan Murphy’s adaptation of Augusten Burroughs' bestselling memoir, “Running With Scissors” is the latest in the genre. Murphy, who created the cable TV hit “Nip/Tuck,” also wrote the screenplay.

The film is best described as being a very dark comedy. By the final act, things have crossed the line into the region of being simply “very dark.”

Its sensibilities are not for every taste but, for those who can take it, the film will be satisfying.

Author Burroughs is played by Joseph Cross, who also supplies the film’s narration. In his opening monologue he says, "I guess it doesn't matter where I begin. No one is gonna believe me anyway."

He explains that this story is one of how his mother, the struggling poet Deirdre Burroughs, left him. And how he left her.

Fade to six-year-old Augusten putting rollers in his mom’s hair as she’s on the phone explaining to his school why Augusten won’t be there today – again.

The time is 1971 and Deirdre, it is readily apparent, is a textbook definition of the self-absorbed, sedately overwrought and delusional product of the 1960s – a soul searching for her “true voice.” Her poetry gets rejection letters from the most minuscule and inane of publications.

She thinks “The New Yorker” will be accepting her work any day.

Annette Bening is no stranger to this kind of role (see “American Beauty,” “Mrs. Harris” or “Being Julia”). She is perfectly cast here and ¬– with a nod to “For Your Consideration” – already has an Oscar buzz surrounding her performance.

Alec Baldwin has a small but important role as the alcoholic father/husband whose bewildered look gives away his innermost quiet desperation.

After the couple separates, Deirdre becomes firmly ensnared in the clutches of her psychiatrist, the rather unorthodox Dr. Finch. Finch and his family are so out of the realm of reality that the viewer knows these characters cannot be totally the product of fiction. The real people represented in the novel are most likely stranger than this.

Deirdre eventually decides to give the teenaged Augusten to the Finches, who want to become his legal guardians.

Augusten has already realized he’s gay and soon begins having an affair with one of Finch’s more psychotic patients.

Soon after, Deirdre begins having a relationship with one of the women in her “poetry group.” Both mother and son are shocked and revolted – in every way coming and going.

Since Burroughs survived to write this memoir, we already know there is, at the very least, a “happy” ending of some sort.

Most of the characters involved, as we learn in the closing credits, get what the laws of karma deem they have coming.

“Running With Scissors” will undoubtedly make many viewers uncomfortable. But sometimes a good film (book, painting, photograph, song or poem) has to take that road.

The poet Keats proclaimed, “Truth is beauty.”

Someone else said, “The truth hurts.”

Both are true.

“Army of Shadows”

Directed by: Jean-Pierre Melville

Starring: Lino Ventura, Simone Signoret, Paul Meurisse

The film is not rated.

By the time you read this, “Army of Shadows” will no longer be playing in Springfield. But it will surely be available shortly for the home video market, and it’s a film that should not be missed.

Director Jean-Pierre Melville read Joseph Kessel’s novel about the French resistance when it was published in 1943.

In 1969, Melville made a film based upon the book. In 2006, that film has been restored and re-released.

The story, and the film made from it, have lost absolutely nothing in the ensuing years.

“Army of Shadows” is somber in tone while it examines the indomitability of the human spirit in a way the best movies always seem to do.

Melville’s direction, along with Pierre Lhomme’s state-of-the-art (even by today’s standards) cinematography, make it easy to see why many critics are picking a film made 37 years ago as one of the best of 2006.

Jim Wunderle owns Wunderle Sound Services and is a Springfield free-lance writer and musician. He can be reached at info@wunderlesound.com.