Running from Crazy

A superior film where the subject--Mariel Hemingway--takes stock of the various skeletons in the Hemingway closet. Suicide, depression, mental illness, substance abuse and incest are all approached with unflinching honesty and this film shows the fierce resilience on Mariel's part not to repeat the cycle of despair and tragedy that has haunted this family's history. Beautifully filmed with wonderful footage taken in 1984 when Mariel's sister Margeaux was attempting to make a film herself. Mariel is determined to offer her daughters an escape from the cycle despair and suicide that has haunted this family for three generations. Barabara Kopple does a masterful job of capturing all the drama in the Hemingway family history.

Everyone else is hating on Mariel -- you know, she's blonde, she's pretty, she must die -- but really I thought this documentary was pretty good. You can see how much she loves her daughters, Dree and Langley, and how they're working to build lives of their own outside the Hemingway curse.

What's missing is the wonderful self-knowledge and wry sense of humor Mariel shows as a writer, especially in Out Came the Sun. Read that if you really want to know how Mariel Hemingway looks at life.

I wanted to love this. I watched it a few times. Suicide is a terrible thing, but I wondered if incest was the factor in that family that caused the suicide. People are not necessarily born depressed, but they can be made depressed. However, the only people who were compelling in this documentary were Muffet and Margot. They were the soul sisters of that family. Mariel is really selfish and lazy when it comes to thinking of or helping anyone else, especially her sister Muffet. I was really angry to see that Mariel was living the high life and she refused to help Muffet who was dirt poor and mentally ill. That immorality was enough for me to not ever watch another film with her in it. It was a sad case of attention seeking. There should be a sequel of how to help Muffet, which would be well received.

I am a fan of Barbara Kopple's films and this is not one of her best. I'm not sure I would even call it a documentary. It's more like a self-help / memoir video. As such, it was very fitting that it had it's television premiere on OWN, where it was called a docudrama. To some that may seem a small distinction but to anyone who truly appreciates good documentaries it's huge.

This is Mariel Hemingway's story of the many years and many paths she's been on to find that something or someone who makes her feel loved, protected and okay as a human being. "Crazy"......not so much. WASP protected, never spoken of lives of great sadness and depression despite "having it all".....you bet. I am not saying mental illness does not exist in the Hemingway gene pool but that really isn't what this film is about. It's about Mariel's quest for spiritual healing and fulfillment. Part of which is the very admirable public speaking that she does to put a public face on illness and depression few wish to acknowledge within their own families.

By far, the most absorbing pieces of this film are those that are about Margaux. Margaux's own documentary footage is used extensively and it is the only portion of the film that truly captures our attention. She speaks from the place of someone who has great insight into herself and her family. Even her body language is extraordinary in what it reveals about what she knows to be true. I'm sorry to say that Mariel does not come across with that same depth of knowledge despite the years of searching.

The most revealing portions of the film pertain to truths Mariel has apparently yet to acknowledge. One is that her first husband has a cameo, out of nowhere, and appears to be having a coded conversation with her about how maintaining control has been her one big must in life lest she end up dead like 7 other family members and yet she has a tendency to inappropriately give that control away to others. Two is that her boyfriend sure looks to me like he is controlling, manipulative and openly disdainful of her. And the obvious-o-meter goes ding,ding,ding!

Though the last 10 minutes or so, which deal with Mariel Hemingway's suicide-prevention activism and participation in a walkathon, are quite touching, this unfocused documentary bogs down badly for the 90 minutes that come before. What it shows is a wealthy, white, bourgeois, deeply screwed up family of American WASPs—but if that's mental illness, then 80% of the Republican party is mentally ill. Alcoholism, drug abuse, unhappy marriages, neglected children, allegations of sex abuse and the completely typical attendant family dramas about who is lying about that abuse and who is refusing to acknowledge the truth may have a certain soap-operaish, staring-at- a-train-wreck appeal, but they are connected to the topic of mental illness and suicide by only the flimsiest of threads. The film is uncomfortable to watch because much of its "realness" is presented without context or analysis. When Mariel visits her oldest sister, Joan (Muffet), who is semi- institutionalized, Joan is clearly suffering symptoms of tardive dyskinesia brought about by long-time use of anti-psychotics. The fact that the two women giggle and reminisce as if things were perfectly normal but with no mention of Joan's condition is simply gruesome. Nor is there any commentary regarding Mariel's bizarre, exploitative decision to visit her sister after not having seen her for more than a year, apparently solely so she can film the encounter for the documentary. Scenes of Mariel's interactions with her husband who is – let's be honest about it – a cruel, sexist, abusive jerk, only underscore the extent to which the film's material is undigested; there's something both disturbing and naive about the idea that depicting emotional pain is the same as having insight into it. Unhappy families may experience unhappiness each in their own way, but there's very little in this film to hint that members of the Hemingway clan have learned much about coping with theirs.