Running with Scissors

The search for happiness sometimes seems like trying to navigate a maze. There are so many paths leading in every direction. The wrong path can get us lost -- and there are so many paths that lead to nowhere.

Running with Scissors is based on the memoirs of Augusten Burroughs's early teen years. His parents broke up. His father is alcoholic. His mother wants to be creative and dreams of being a famous poet. Augusten is sent to live with his mother's psychiatrist and his bizarre family. Among all these people the search for happiness shows us many trails through the maze, but will any ever get to the goal in the center?

The story takes place in the late 70s, a heyday for self-actualization and personal fulfillment. During this time women were still struggling for esteem and empowerment through Women's Liberation. New drugs for depression were coming into vogue. Gay and lesbians were just starting to come out of the closet. Sexuality was a constantly changing and challenging subject. All of these various paths to find happiness are looked at in this film. And they are all found wanting.

Whether things happened as Burroughs records (and adapted for film by Ryan Murphy) may be beside the point. Certainly the film is done in such a way to make us think there is a lot of hyperbole involved. The various characters are almost cartoonish versions of stereotypes. Augusten's mother Deirdre epitomizes the search for fulfillment. She writes poetry and longs for affirmation (in the form of publication). She speaks of letting poetry be the outlet for anger. She, in reality, is repressed and insecure. She goes to Dr. Finch trying to unblock her creative spirit. He gives her drugs.

Dr. Finch exudes an avuncular personality, but underneath it all is a true quack. He allows his family to live in squalor and do whatever they like. His wife, Agnes, spends the day watching Dark Shadows (a 70s soap opera about vampires) and munching dog kibble like popcorn. The elder daughter, Hope, is seemingly religious (but in a wacky form of Christianity) and very straight-laced. The younger daughter, Natalie, is rebellious (how can you rebel when there are no rules?) Finch is in debt to the IRS, has few patients, and dispenses the most off the wall kind of psychiatric nonsense.

Augusten spends his time going back and forth between his mother and the Finch family. Neither place is home for him. Neither place is nurturing. We watch as Deirdre becomes more and more spaced out from the drugs and slowly slides into a complete meltdown. The Finch household is in a constant state of uproar, as each person focuses only on themselves.

This is a film that's hard to categorize. In many ways it seems like a comedy, but it's way to somber. It is filled with pathos as a good tragedy should be, but it doesn't end up with destruction. Some of the most deeply disturbing scenes are also the ones that garner the most laughs. The humor and pathos of this story blend so well that it is easy to lose the serious ideas in the absurdity.

Self-actualization is an important part of a full and healthy life. Psychologist Abram Maslow put it at the top of his Hierarchy of Needs. In that hierarchy, people only advance as they have lower needs fulfilled: physiological, safety, love/belonging, and esteem. Certainly all of the paths to happiness this film goes down (psychiatry, sexuality, empowerment, etc.) can be tools to help us realize higher levels of actualization. But the people in this film (and many people) seek those higher levels before they have their other needs met. That is when the paths end up leading nowhere as they do for the characters in Running with Scissors.