The Moving Picture

“Running with Scissors” is a powerful and moving film, but it is not for the average moviegoer.
The story is painful to watch, though in its many absurd and ridiculous moments there is a dark humor, though many will find it hard to appreciate. The storyline is also not a Hollywood fiction. These terribly hurtful things really did happen and many lives were seriously damaged.
“Running with Scissors” is a cinematic presentation of the book by the same name, which is based on the personal memoirs of Augusten Burroughs. Burroughs survived one of the craziest and most horrible childhoods one could imagine.
He survived a bipolar self-centered mother who emotionally abused his alcoholic father. He survived being given up for adoption to his mother’s psychiatrist — a man only slightly less crazy than she was. He survived living with the man’s highly eccentric and only barely sane family. At the age of 15 he began a homosexual love affair with one of his adopted father’s patients — a 35-year-old paranoid schizophrenic with violent tendencies — and he survived.
Furthermore, Burroughs not only survived a never-ending wave of emotional and mental abuse monstrous enough to crush even the strongest personalities, he conquered it all. Burroughs went on to write a best-selling novel that is now a motion picture.
Despite his berserk childhood, Burroughs has led a successful and fulfilling life. And this hope, this belief that things can still be O.K. no matter how dark it gets, pervades the film.
And though this idea shines clearly through the movie, I was the only one in the theater to see the bright message. The rest of the meager audience left the theater bitterly voicing their displeasure and lamenting their wasted two hours. This reaction perhaps suggest how hard it is to hope and how easily the fragile emotion is lost in the darkness of life, like it was lost in the dark theater.
At the film’s conclusion I was tearfully smiling at Augusten’s brave conquest and I could not help but admire his unquenchable lust for living. Despite a mother with delusions of grandeur and prone to psychotic breaks, who did everything she possibly could to stamp out his dreams, he hoped. Despite a father who abandoned him to his mentally disturbed mother at 13-years-old and who eventually drank himself to death, he hoped. Despite the abuses and misuses of his adopted father, Augusten continued to hope. How can you not find hope in that?
This is a powerful film, but if you are not one capable of, or experienced at, finding beauty in darkness, then the darkened theater of a showing of “Running with Scissors” is no place for you. However, if you believe there is hope despite all the voices that warn against it, then you may just find what you are looking for in “Running with Scissors.”
Furthermore, if you are interested in the Oscar race, this is not a film to miss. “Running with Scissors” is likely to earn an Oscar nod for Best Adapted Screenplay. And do not be surprised to hear Annette Bening’s name once again nominated for Best Actress. She delivered yet another unforgettable performance as Augusten’s mentally ill mother.
In fact, there was not a weak link in the cast and they all deserve recognition for their strong deliveries. Without their outstanding performances this film’s bright message would surely have been lost in the dark.