Running From Crazy, 2012.
Directed by Barbara Kopple.
SYNOPSIS:
Running from Crazy is a documentary examining the personal journey of model and actress Mariel Hemingway, the granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway, as she strives for a greater understanding…
A documentary can be a powerful tool to inform people of a serious issue that people may have overlooked in their day to day lives. Running from Crazy however seemed to miss that class in film school as it’s a documentary about nothing in particular.
The documentary follows Mariel Hemingway as she recounts her family’s terrible history of suicide, which she puts down to mental illness. However it ends up becoming more of a documentary about the three granddaughters of the great Ernest Hemingway which makes it end up like a Sky Living docu-drama in the lines of Keeping up with the Kardashians.
The issue of mental illness is addressed in the opening moments of the movie but it isn’t brought up again until the closing moments of the film making it feel like a colossal waste of time. Instead of breaking down the barriers of how the world perceives mental illness, we get long scenes of Mariel and her boyfriend Bobby going driving in the desert and having an argument before they go rock climbing. It all feels so utterly pointless as it meanders from uninteresting scene to uninteresting scene.
The most fascinating thing about Running from Crazy is that the documentary is inter-spliced with a unfinished documentary about Ernest Hemingway made in the 80s by Mariel’s sister Margaux. It gives us a good insight into the Hemingway family and their tragic history, but it sadly does lend itself to making Running from Crazy nothing more than a glorified documentary about her and her tragic life.
Because it’s so unbalanced, Running from Crazy is often very, very boring. At times I could almost feel myself nodding off because there wasn’t anything of interest being shown. The Hemingways have had a tragic history and parts of it are very engaging (the Margaux segments for example), but there is nothing overly special about them apart from the connection to their grandfather. The film does assume that the audience will already know a lot about the family, but if you’re already up on your Hemingway history then you’ll find nothing new here.
Running from Crazy could have made a really good point about mental illness and its connections to suicide but it gets overshadowed by some pretty big egos who seem more interested in talking about themselves than the issue they claim to help promote. I’m sure Barabra Kopple had good intentions with the documentary but they got lost along the way.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★
Luke Owen is one of Flickering Myth’s co-editors and the host of the Month in Review show for Flickering Myth’s Podcast Network. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.
Originally published April 25, 2013. Updated November 6, 2019.
