Hillbilly Elegy
There are some good messages, and good stories, that could be made into a great movie in “Hillbilly Elegy.” None of them quite come together in the emotional groundswell that director Ron Howard, screenwriter Vanessa Taylor or J.D. Vance, the venture capitalist whose memoir they are adapting here, want. They try, as does Hans Zimmer’s score, but not only does it all seem very predictable, it doesn’t feel as authentic as it wants to be, either. It could have been, though, if the story had been structured a bit differently.
It is his memoir, and thus, his point-of-view, but J.D. Vance is but one of four main protagonists this movie could have ultimately been about, and felt more honest to what it wants to do. By focusing on Vance, “Hillbilly Elegy” is trying to hammer home the notion that a person’s upbringing doesn’t define their future, while also saying that it’s important for people to own their hardships, as well. Both are noble sentiments, to be sure, but as hard as some people work, they can never get away from their socio-economic status in life- the system is not set up that way for some people. Owning one’s hardships is easier to do, and it can certainly help drive us to succeed in life, but that will only take us so far without help. That’s not the message Vance would want us to take away from his story, which is a bit of a rags-to-riches tale of pulling one’s self up by their bootstraps to find success. Life doesn’t work that way, though, and I’m curious if Vance’s own family would see it that way in real life.
There are two parallel stories being told here. The first one is in 1997, when J.D., his mother (Bev, played by Amy Adams), his sister (Lindsay, played by Haley Bennett), and his grandparents (played by Glenn Close and Bo Hopkins) move from the Appalachian home they had in Kentucky to Middletown, Ohio. The second one is set 14 years later, as J.D. (Gabriel Basso), who’s working his way through Yale, is trying to get his foot in the door at a law firm, but finds himself drawn back home through his mother’s struggles with drug addiction. His home life was turbulent growing up, and his mother was abusive and reckless. His grandmother was more grounded, owning up to her flaws, but tried to be a strong guiding voice for J.D.. Lindsay has a family of her own, and although she has stayed close to Bev and their grandmother, she is unable to watch out for their mother the way she might be able to otherwise. When J.D. has an unexpected call back from a second interview, how can he balance his life with the needs of his family?
As we grow older, we sometimes find ourselves having to take more responsibility for our parents, or grandparents, usually because of health or financial reasons. I’ve definitely felt that responsibility myself in the past couple of years with my mom, and the past seven in general since my father died, and I know my wife has been the same way with her parents. I empathize with J.D.’s dilemma in this film, because, even if the exact circumstances aren’t the same, but one thing that kept nagging at me in this movie was that I wanted to see more of Lindsay’s struggle, as well, as the sibling who’s been in the thick of it with J.D. away at school. That’s a credit to Bennett, who low-key gives the most honest performance in the film, but it’s also why the movie might have been more impactful had it been more about the family from an objective point-of-view, rather than J.D.’s memories of it. Maybe the end credits video of the family in real life might have meant more.
Bev and Mamaw, as she’s credited as in the film, are the showiest roles in the film, and Adams and Close do what they can with them. Adams’s best moments are an early scene in the 1997 time period where she is yelling, with J.D. in the car, and drives faster and faster, frightening him to the point where he has to get our of the car and run to a nearby house for help, and later, as she is struggling with the character’s addiction; a great movie could have been made solely about Bev’s drug addiction, and how it destroys lives, but again, that’s not this movie. Close, like Adams, has moments, especially when she is trying to get through to young J.D. about how he is behaving. Neither actress feels like they give a well-rounded performance, but that is less their fault, and more the fault of the roles they are given. Writing and perspective strikes again.
“Hillbilly Elegy” is a movie with fewer things on its mind than it’d like to convince us it has on its mind. What it does well, it actually does really well. What it doesn’t do well is largely conventional, and likely forgettable. That it has some of those things it does really well is a credit to Howard, who, even when he’s not quite on his game, is more than capable of giving audiences something to latch on to.
