National Post (National Edition)
MATTERS OF FAMILY
HILLBILLY ELEGY IS A MOVING PORTRAIT OF A HOUSEHOLD UNDONE BY SUBSTANCE ABUSE
Cast: Gabriel Basso, Amy Adams, Glenn Close Director: Ron Howard
Duration: 1 h 56 m
Available: In cinemas across Canada. Streams on Netflix
Nov. 24.
The crux of good cinematic storytelling is to find the universal amid the specific, and deliver it to the masses. Director Ron Howard's newest, based on the memoir of venture capitalist J.D. Vance, is called Hillbilly Elegy, but you don't need to be a redneck to appreciate its drama.
I grew up 800 kilometres from Vance's childhood home in Middleton, Ohio, and farther still from the Kentucky stronghold of his “hill people” ancestors. But I connected immediately to the importance of family ties, and the way you can divide clans into two sorts. There are those who have a gruff-speaking, no-guff-taking elder matriarch. And those who need one.
Glenn Close plays Mamaw under a frizzy wig, a waddling gait and shapeless sweaters, stealing her every scene and delivering some of the best zingers this side of Madea's Family Reunion. “I wouldn't spit on her ass if her guts were on fire” is one of her more withering remarks. “Get out before I cancel your birth certificate” she barks at her grandson in another scene. And when he replies that he hates her, she spits back: “I don't care if you hate me. I ain't in it for popularity.”
Mamaw is all tough love. Whereas her daughter Bev (Amy Adams) is tough and love, but never both at once. If you've ever lived with an addict you know that they can be alternately fun and terrible, the life of the party and the death of you. And Owen Asztalos as young J.D. nails the look of confusion that you often see on family members. Is Mom going to hug me or smack me?
Hillbilly Elegy has been advertised as “a modern exploration of the American dream through three generations of an Appalachian family.” But we're really only given two time periods to experience. Much of the film takes place around 1997, when J.D. was a teen, teetering between delinquency and watching Meet the Press on TV. (Not that you can't do both.) A substantial chunk is set in 2011, when the young man's shot at a law-firm internship is almost derailed by a family crisis, after his mom overdoses on heroine.
There are a few scenes set in the '30s, when Mamaw was a teenage mother, but we almost don't need them. Audiences will easily accept that she's just always been there, like a seam of coal. Indeed, the one scene that really took me out of the movie was when J.D.'s sister Lindsay (Haley Bennett) reminds him that Mamaw had it tough back in the day, and the two of them appear to stop and watch the flashback along with the audience.
Fortunately, these kinds of narrative missteps are rare. For the most part Hillbilly Elegy delivers a moving portrait of a family undone by substance abuse, and also examines the kind of intergenerational supports that are sometimes only really noticeable in their absence. When Bev's father (Bo Hopkins) dies, it's as if someone has severed her anchor chain. And when Mamaw takes J.D. under her wing it's clear she's operating from a place of guilt as much as love, blaming herself for being unable to keep Beverley on the straight and narrow.
I haven't yet mentioned Gabriel Basso, who plays adult J.D. in a quiet performance that can get lost amid the more dramatic turns by the women in the family. (Hopkins is similarly hardly there.) But Basso is playing a very particular type of southerner, the introvert whose conversation mostly consists of “yes sir, yes ma'am,” but who can nonetheless be roused to anger and worse if his honour is besmirched.
The film isn't perfect. The score (by David Fleming and Hans Zimmer) too often resorts to a kind of hoedown twang to indicate emotion. The camerawork, particularly a scene of J.D. flummoxed by the extensive tableware at a fancy dinner party, is similarly too showy by half. And I wish we could have seen more of Freida Pinto as his girlfriend, though I get why her character is on the sidelines. She's not family. Yet.
But Hillbilly Elegy has been garnering some seriously negative reviews, starting with U.S. publications and quickly spilling into Canada. Many critics seem to take umbrage with the real Vance's conservative politics. But not all entertainment needs to be viewed through a political lens, even in this year of dissension. The story is set a decade and more in the past; no need to drag 2020 into the movie when you go. ΠΠΠΠ