‘ELEGY’ MISSES POINT OF VANCE’S 2016 NOVEL
J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy,” an election-year explainer to liberal America about the White underclass that fueled Donald Trump’s rise, has been reborn as blandly overbaked awards bait.
Ron Howard’s adaptation, penned by Vanessa Taylor, has mostly done away with the moralizing social examination that made Vance’s bestseller such a lightning rod. The 2016 book came at the moment many were searching for explanations for the political shift taking place across Appalachia and the Rust Belt. “Hillbilly Elegy,” a pick-yourself-up-by-yourbootstraps cultural critiqueslash-tribute to the author’s Ohio-Kentucky heritage, emerged as one of the trendiest answers.
Howard’s film arrives on the heels of another election cycle without a whiff of the same analysis and he instead leans into the colorful and difficult characters of Vance’s family for a neater redemption arc. That has a dual effect. This “Hillbilly Elegy” has stripped away the most sermonizing, debatable parts of the book, but it has also denuded it of any deeper purpose, leaving us with a cosplay shell of A-list actors chewing rural scenery.
Howard’s “Hillbilly Elegy,” released on Netf lix this week, is well-meaning. But it teeters constantly on the edge of parody, never slowing down enough to let its characters — a shouty, melodramatic bunch fighting through a chaotic world of poverty, addiction and abuse — come through as much more than caricature. If the book begat a blizzard of op-eds, the film is more
likely to inspire only memes of its most Appalachia soap opera moments.
It’s a jumble of timelines, but the basic shape of “Hillbilly Elegy” is a reluctant homecoming. J.D. Vance (Gabriel Basso as an adult, Owen Asztalos as a kid) gets a call from his sister (Haley Bennett) that their mother, Bev (Amy Adams), has overdosed. He drives home from Yale Law School when he’s on the cusp of a major job interview to the decaying steel down of Middletown, Ohio. The trip forces him to reckon with his roots, bringing back a flood of memories just as he’s leaving his past behind.
Some memories are better than others. Anything with grandma, for starters, is something to behold. That’s because Glenn Close, buried under prosthetics, a coral reef of frizzy hair and plate-sized glasses, is the crochety, cigarette-smoking, foul-mouthed Mamaw. Close’s performance is overthe-top, but there’s grit and strength in it.
By taking politics out of “Hillbilly Elegy,” the movie has unwittingly put some back in. Instead of a tale emerging from a seldom listened-to corner of the world, Howard’s film has reversed course. Hollywood rushes in, wigs in tow.