Hillbilly Elegy (2020)
SHOULD I SEE IT?
YES
Amy Adams and Glenn Close always deserve our attention.
Those who were fans of J.D. Vance’s memoirs will be drawn to see the film adaptation of his upbringing, life, and rise above poverty and family addiction.
A film with a major critic/audience divide, I am pretty steadfast in my take of the film but maybe this is a movie that will play differently for you than it did for me.
NO
The film just feels crass and celebrates our main character doing the absolute minimum to help his ailing family, while learning nothing of the strain and stress his loved ones have been experiencing while he has been away at law school.
Piles difficulty upon difficulty and constantly one-up’s itself, almost as if it is some kind of superhero origin story for J.D. Vance. What an odd movie this is.
It is pretty rich to have a theme of “pick yourself up by your bootstraps” and then the main character undercut that very idea in almost everyone of his decisions.
OUR REVIEW
Like a game of “Gotcha!” or a strange cinematic form of completing a cruel dare, Ron Howard’s meandering and staggeringly rough Hillbilly Elegy is a movie that dares you to admit you do not like it. Since its pre-screening for critics who largely panned it, the movie has been politicized in certain camps as being a target for those on the left. As if we need one more thing to become political.
Politics or not - both things can be true: Hillbilly Elegy can be the story of J.D. Vance’s rise from poverty while overcoming a challenging upbringing and the movie adapted from his memoirs can also be terrible.
What’s strange is that the names involved almost beg for this to be a better film. Glenn Close and Amy Adams lead the way as a mother and daughter, who fight themselves and their mental health, wellbeing, and addictive personalities every moment of the day. Under Howard’s guidance, the movie should feel cohesive and well-constructed, written by Oscar-nominated screenwriter Vanessa Thomas. Sadly, it misses the mark. Consistently. In scene-after-scene, the movie exists seemingly to try and one-up the trauma and pain from what came before it.
I want to believe the intent was not to make Vance’s life a superhero origin story, but the parallels are present. Vance (Gabriel Basso as an adult, Owen Asztalos as a teen) is raised by a single mother, Bev (Adams), mired in severe bouts of reoccurring drug addiction and anger. Uprooted time and again, Bev is looking for something to not sabotage, while her mother, known as Mamaw (Close), is navigating her own efforts in trying to hold her immediate family together.
Vance’s story is one of overcoming obstacles and trying to heal from emotional and physical wounds inflicted upon him. J.D., as a law student attending Yale, has a girlfriend named Usha (Freida Pinto) he loves, but through flashbacks he realizes he is unable to reckon with, and is ashamed of, his past. This is amplified when a call comes from his sister Lindsey (Haley Bennett). Bev has relapsed and she begs him to come back home to Ohio to help care for her.
Usha is left in the dark about why J.D. is leaving for a bit. And then we see a myriad of flashbacks of difficult, challenging, and increasingly awful experiences build one after another. J.D., and to a lesser extent his sister, are constantly fighting back the beasts of emotional torment and somehow finding a way to move forward in the world.
All of this presents as a slippery slope. Vance’s story, housed within a significant best-selling book in 2016, led to his emergence on a national stage as a political pundit. He considered a senatorial run. And as the book became more popular, the people of Appalachian country pushed back significantly on Vance’s assertions and commentary. A 2019 award-winning book, “Appalachian Reckoning,” served as a blistering response.
Vance, perhaps unsurprisingly, always finds a way to persevere. Though he is somehow affording a Yale education, his sister is left to raise her kids in isolation, while trying to take care of things back home. Bev is spiraling into despair and dangerous addiction, Mamaw is barely holding on. When Lindsey tearfully asks J.D. to come home and help – he furrows his brow, sighs, exhales, and begrudgingly returns.
While I don’t think he stomps his feet, he may as well have - he is rude to Usha and has a looming internship opportunity hanging in the balance. He apparently is the only family member who is able to financially help put Bev in rehab, which he does heroically by stringing together four different credit card accounts, telling everyone things will be fine, confronting his mother, and somehow making it back just in time to be present, and suited up, for his big interview.
Howard has no real handle on how to tell Vance’s story. The movie is slapped together haphazardly, leers at the dereliction and swims in the pain and anguish repeatedly. Adams and Close are not bad in the movie, they just are left to elevate material that does them no favors. Close’s hair and makeup looks as if she’s a sitcom or sketch character, while Adams is de-prettified so obviously that you are completely removed from the emotions she is trying to convey on screen.
Hillbilly Elegy is not a bad movie because it uses source material written by a conservative man. Hillbilly Elegy is a bad movie because it is poorly conceived and constructed. The film’s best performance comes from Bennett, but even she is left to try and make this puzzle look put together with only half of the pieces made available to her.
No matter how much awful transpires, J.D. Vance becomes a stronger man because of it. And while we all should celebrate the moments when and where we transcend our challenges and grow and prosper, there is something that rings hollow in the way Howard and Taylor craft this on screen.
The poverty, the addiction, the pain and sorrow – it’s all spectacle. And for the sake of his family, thank goodness J.D. Vance felt in his heart of hearts that he should come home. Wherever would the family be if he hadn’t swooped in (and swooped out) to save the day?
CAST & CREW
Starring: Amy Adams, Glenn Close, Gabriel Basso, Haley Bennett, Freida Pinto, Owen Asztalos, Keong Sim, Morgan Gao, Bo Hopkins.
Director: Ron Howard
Written by: Vanessa Taylor
Based on the book “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” by J.D. Vance
Release Date: November 11, 2020 (theaters); November 24, 2020 (Netflix)
Netflix