Running from Crazy

Using home movies and other footage, Kopple provides a discomfiting portrait of a family’s deep-seated dysfunction.

It’s Margaux, the tragic supermodel and failed actress who took her own life at 42, who emerges as the film’s fount of heartbreak in several stunning scenes.

There is much here of interest to aficionados of the great author as well as to those curious about the complicated relationship between sisters Mariel and the late Margaux.

A certain Hollywood self-absorption is on display here, but the family’s depressing story merits Mariel’s vigilant defensiveness.

That the structure consistently undermines its own storytelling is frustrating when the story to be told is a vital and interesting one.

The narratively jumbled film...features too many scenes that amount to mere stargazing.

The possible hereditary nature of suicide in general and of the seven known Hemingway suicides in particular is lazily poked at; decades of research go unmentioned and unexplored.