Hillbilly Elegy
Ratings: 3.2/5
Director: Ron Howard
Producers: Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Karen Lunder
Genre: Drama
Language: English
Release Date: 11 November 2020
Streaming on: Netflix
Star Cast: Glenn Close, Amy Adams, Gabriel Basso, Owen Asztalos, Haley Bennett, Freida Pinto, Bo Hopkins
Plot:
The film is a modern exploration of the American Dream through three generations of an Appalachian family.
Review:
Hillbilly Elegy is the best-selling memoir by J.D. Vance. The Oscar-winner director and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Vanessa Taylor (The Shape of Water) stripped out Vance's exhaustive documentation of the disillusionment, detachment and sometimes discrimination felt by poor whites.
Vance’s story cuts back between his youth in 1997 and his time in law school in 2011. Vance had a complicated childhood growing up with erratic mother Beverly (Adams), whose behaviour ranges from sweet and indulgent to violent and angry at the drop of a hat. She’s a woman filled with resentment at the life she’s had to lead, and then picks up a drug addiction when her father dies (there’s no scene showing that she was close to her dad; we’re just told that she was and that’s supposed to be good enough). This leads young JD (Owen Asztalos) to rely more on his tough-as-nails, chain-smoking grandmother Mamaw (Close). As an adult, JD (Gabriel Basso), on the verge of landing an important internship that will pay his way through law school, must return back to Middletown, Ohio when Beverly ODs on heroin and is hospitalized.
This is a drama about the teenage and young adult J.D. (Owen Asztalos, Gabriel Basso) and his sister Lindsay (Haley Bennett) suffering through the consequences of their mother's and grandmother's crazy antics and failed relationships.
The story is told through multiple flashbacks, and flashbacks within flashbacks, while J.D. is away at Harvard Law School, after surviving his (not mine) hillbilly culture in Middletown, Marine boot camp, the Iraq War, and his undergraduate degree at Ohio State University. He's called home by Lindsay while interviewing for prestigious internships after their mother overdoses yet again, long after both their Mamaw and Papaw (Bo Hopkins) are dead.
In Howard's $45-million adaptation for Netflix, we see screenwriter Vanessa Taylor carefully cutting out the most overtly political passages of Vance’s book- particularly his rant about how welfare recipients are all tricking the system so they can stock up on booze, cigarettes, and mobile phones.
The cinematic version rather showed tragedy and stirring violins by composers Hans Zimmer and David Fleming. The camera runs around, closing into people’s faces to make its audience feel like they’re a part of this world. Moments of agony play out in absolute slow-motion.
Hillbilly Elegy intends to be a movie that professes to care about poverty and family but doesn’t fully achieve that.
