Hillbilly Elegy (2020)

 

A lot of people have probably now seen Hillbilly Elegy because the author of the book on which it is based, J.D. Vance, was chosen to be the Republican nominee for Vice President of the United States. The film covers two periods in Vance’s life: his teenage years when his mother (Amy Adams, not an obvious choice but ably doing what she can with a part that mostly calls for her to be an awful mother to her children) was beginning to show signs of the various addictions that would torment her for much of her (and his) life. He winds up living with his Mamaw (Glenn Close) for a period of time, and she attempts to give him some stability and support, just not without a few profane words and some tough love along the way. The other segments of the movie show J.D. as a law student at Yale who’s trying to interview for a summer internship, but he’s struggling because apparently no one in his family ever taught him which fork to use at dinner and everyone else he’s competing with seems to be from a rich family, which I guess would be true for a lot of the students at Yale Law School. However, his mother’s addictions have overtaken her life again, and she has overdosed on heroin, seemingly right in the middle of a big important dinner with the partners at the law firm who will determine his future. Timing is everything. He faces the difficult choice of staying at Yale with his girlfriend and seeing if he can get the internship or returning to his home to try to help his mother. It’s not an easy choice – well, it shouldn’t be an easy choice – but the film does make the entire family out to be one of the most dysfunctional ones ever put on the screen. How or why these people still have a bond with each other is cause for puzzlement. We even get some brief flashbacks to his mother’s childhood, when Vance’s Mamaw and Papaw were hardly on the best of terms themselves thanks to his grandfather’s alcoholism. I mean, Mamaw sets her husband on fire at one point, so you know the Christmas card isn’t going to have a picture of smiling relatives. I’ve read the book on which this film was based, and the movie doesn’t quite cover everything as accurately as it could, but to cram so much awfulness into a couple of hours must not have been easy. Other than a nomination for Close as Vance’s grandma, the film was recognized for its Makeup and Hairstyling, which had to cover multiple decades and attempt to make both Adams and Close look more like ragged hillbillies than the beautiful people that they are. It’s not the most fun movie to watch, and I doubt it is really as inspirational as everyone seems to think (or hope) that it is, but the performances by Adams, Close, Gabriel Basso as the college-aged Vance, and Freida Pinto from Slumdog Millionaire in her far-too-few scenes as Vance’s girlfriend Usha are certainly noteworthy. The film, thankfully, doesn’t delve too deeply into the political aspects of Vance’s book; it just concentrates upon his life story without adding the commentary for which the book has been both praised and criticized.

Oscar Nominations: Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role (Glenn Close) and Best Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling