KRR: So, 'Hillbilly Elegy' Says Nothing, and It Says It Poorly.

 

God grant me the strength to make it through this review. *deep sigh* Okay here we go.

I knew Hillbilly Elegy wasn't going to be great when I turned it on. I'd heard enough things from enough voices I trust to know that it was probably going to be a swing and a miss. However, I did not expect the bat to slip out of Ron Howard's hands, hurl into the stands, and clobber me over the head. I didn't expect to suffer the way I suffered watching this movie. And because I suffered, I'll be damned if I'm not gonna talk about it.

Hillbilly Elegy is Netflix's newest release and their Oscar frontrunner. Ron Howard's adaptation of the 2016 memoir by J.D. Vance that took the nation by storm is a not-so-deep look at backwoods Appalachia through three generations of one family. Starring Glenn Close, Amy Adams, and Gabriel Basso, Hillbilly Elegy is a clear push to finally get an Academy Award in the hands of (at least one of either) Amy Adams and Glenn Close. It is also a resounding failure in its attempt to say anything meaningful whatsoever and adapt one of the most discussed- if not entirely prescient - books of the Trump presidency. 

How, you might be wondering, is it such a failure? How could such an esteemed director, with two incredibly talented actresses, fail to capture even a portion of the Hillbilly Elegy zeitgeist? Let's get into that.

-SPOILERS AHEAD BUT IT DOESN'T REALLY MATTER BECAUSE THIS MOVIE ISN'T WORTH WATCHING-

This is usually the part where I start with the aspects of a film I like most. An amazing script, a brilliant story, a favorite performance, what have you. Even with movies I don't enjoy - of which this is one - I like to keep form, so I'll start with the only detail I found even slightly enjoyable: Glenn Close. She's very good in this. Her performance is real and feels, at times, even complex (although that may just be the juxtaposition with Amy Adams' bad performance). It's the one part of the film that would momentarily ease my suffering. If the Academy has any sense, they'll award Close Best Supporting Actress, and we won't ever have to see her in another one of these poorly made Oscar-baiting movies ever again. Let's hope.

Now on to what isn't good about this godforsaken film. This is what I like to call "the fun part." While Glenn Close is more-or-less fine to watch, Amy Adams is the opposite. She's really going for it. I mean really going for it. She dialed it up way past eleven and just said, "Fuck it, if I can't win an Oscar, I'm at least gonna win a Razzie." Bev, Vance's mother, should've been the focal point of the film, but in Adams' hands she turns the family's centerpiece into a strung-out mess deep in the thralls of psychosis. Bev is played at a single raging tempo, making a complex character into an unbelievable portrayal. Not "unbelievable" in the good way. I mean I literally didn't believe Amy Adams' character. It felt like Amy Adams was playing a game at a dinner party, and she was given the caricature "Crazy Redneck Woman," so she just went 200% for the laughs. That's what I mean by unbelievable.

Now, I should mention I really like Amy Adams. She is a terrific actress and by all accounts a great person. I mean her no disrespect of any sorts. I've even had the opportunity to meet her daughter, a wonderfully sweet little girl, and I would never wish anything bad on her or her family. Amy Adams has all of my respect and adoration. But this performance is really awful. That's all.

I'll have what she's having.

No other performances are worth mentioning, so I'll just skip on ahead. I don't like the way this movie is shot (Ron, buddy, random uses of slow motion are not interesting); I don't like the way this movie is scored (stop trying to make me cry every three minutes, Zimmer); I don't like the random cuts in time back to his childhood (because they lack utter coherence and continuity). I don't like pretty much all of it. But if we're being really honest, what I don't like most is the story.

Hillbilly Elegy was not the full name of the book. It's complete title is Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. Obviously, the subtitle wasn't going to be included in the movie title, but that doesn't mean it needs to be dropped from the movie altogether. What the film lacks - besides all that I've already mentioned - is a meaning. It says absolutely nothing, and it says that nothing poorly.

When the book arrived it was praised for its depiction of Appalachia and poor white communities living on food stamps and opiates, the backbone of Trump's supporters. It was notably panned for oversimplifying that very group, as well. But the movie strays away from that. It doesn't make any proclamations about those communities, as the book does (for better or for worse). Instead, it's purposefully apolitical. It somehow doesn't even reach the shortcomings of its source material.

We get loads and loads and loads of scenes depicting how different life is between Ohio and New Haven, where J.D. goes to school at Yale. Wow, they use different silverware here. Wow, they say "syrup" differently. Wow, they think I come from a coalmining family. We get it. Coastal elites are out of touch. We aren't watching Hillbilly Elegy so we can find out that Yalies are elitist. We already fucking know that. We're watching Hillbilly Elegy in hopes of seeing a depiction of those "rednecks" that challenges the stereotypes presented at Yale. But we don't get it!!

Picking out pictures for this movie is like reliving a trauma.

This film doesn't tell us anything we don't already know. Instead, it plays into the very stereotypes it supposedly seeks to upend. Rednecks are poor, helpless, junkies who need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps or they'll never amount to anything. That's the stereotype. But guess what Hillbilly Elegy teaches us? It teaches that rednecks are A. poor, B. helpless, and C. junkies who need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps or they'll never amount to anything! Just like their parents before them, and their parents before them. This is what happens when you let a bunch of coastal elites from Hollywood make a movie about hillbillies - they make a movie about hillbillies, not the complex people we sweep into the category of "hillbilly."

There's nothing to empathize with here. Yes, I understand losing a loved one. Yeah, I understand hard work. And sure, I even understand drug addiction. But no, I don't fucking care about these characters because we aren't ever given a reason to care about them. Besides the grandmother who likes Terminator, all Hillbilly Elegy presents to audiences is a terrible mother who does terrible things because the world is cruel to her, a forgettable older sister, and a son - the protagonist - with the backbone of a jellyfish and the knowledge of a shrimp. When audiences are presented with woe-is-me characters and leave the movie thinking, "Woe are they," how much are you really doing to further the characterization and discourse around fly-over communities? Ask yourself that, Ron Howard, you California bastard. (I love Ron Howard too, I'm just angry with this movie.)

So, where does that leave us? Hillbilly Elegy is a failure in nearly every aspect of filmmaking and storytelling, besides one: its ability to garner Academy acclaim. Unless the media can push the narrative that this movie is bad - which it is - the Academy will nominate it for Oscars, because the only thing Hollywood likes more than itself, are movies that make people outside of Hollywood seem helpless. In a few months time Hillbilly Elegy may be a critical success for Netflix, Ron Howard, Glenn Close, Amy Adams, and J.D. Vance.

But that doesn't mean it's a success. With all of the resources in the world and a book that everyone in America seems to have read, Ron Howard and crew were able to make a two-hour flop that doubles as Oscar-bait and poverty porn, a film so careless in its characterizations that the communities it depicts were better off before its release, and a movie that isn't worth the 1,300 words I've already dedicated to it.

To say Hillbilly Elegy is a swing and a miss is too kind. It implies a solid effort was made to hit a home run, and I'm not even convinced they wanted to play.

The sooner I lose all memory of this film, the better.

Hillbilly Elegy KRR: 1.6/10