Hillbilly Elegy (2020)

Score: 3 / 5

One of the most polarizing books of the decade, J.D. Vance's memoir Hillbilly Elegy was published the summer before the 2016 election and gained surprising momentum when it became apparent Donald Trump would step into the presidency. Book clubs ate it up and it was added to syllabi in classrooms and seminars all over the country; it hit the top of the New York Times bestseller list in August of that year, and again in January. Many people took it as a gospel account of how and why poorer, working-class white people came out in droves to vote red, and exactly how powerful the invisible masses of Rust Belt Americana could be, given proper motivation. It seemed to explain a culture alien to large areas of the continental U.S. in ways that slyly slid around more clearly controversial topics like race and shied away from definitive political ideology. And in its seductive pathos, it raised more than a few hackles from Appalachians; in its alluring ethos, it inspired ire and scorn from those disillusioned by its championing of the American Dream.

How do you turn a book like this into a film? Well, first you hire a director known for tackling controversial topics like The Da Vinci Code and who has carved a place for himself as a strong and prolific "American" filmmaker; it helps that Ron Howard's introduction to popular culture came through the Andy Griffith Show. Then you hire Vanessa Taylor as a screenwriter whose brief list of accomplished work is gobsmackingly varied (Hope Springs, Aladdin, The Shape of Water, and Game of Thrones). Finally, you cast two of the biggest names in acting to lead the film in roles that, to a reader, might be a tad surprising as main characters.

The memoir primarily works, as you might guess, as an elegy: it paints a picture of a dying or even dead Appalachia, autopsying it to analyze social rot, and generally condemning a region for not saving itself even as Vance mourns the circumstances that brought his family and friends low. Debates rage about the author's use of circular logic, his dubious claims of authority in making his conclusions, and his gross use of broad generalizations based on limited and fairly privileged personal experience. But I don't want to spend too much time critiquing the book here, because the movie ultimately doesn't share a lot of what makes the book so damned controversial.

Indeed, Howard and Taylor have adapted Hillbilly Elegy in ways that, while not necessarily surprising in terms of narrative, definitely change the rhetorical impact on its audience. Cutting out many of Vance's masturbatory passages describing his feelings about everything from chicken decapitation to Japanese crotch rockets, the film takes as its focus the journey that young, precocious JD (I'll refer to JD as the dramatized character, Vance as the real-life author) undergoes. Yes, this is a bildungsroman in the worst way, and we can scarcely deny the power of poverty porn in contemporary storytelling. We are all guilty of indulging to some extent, and JD's journey from a muddy swimming hole in Kentucky through decaying Ohio suburbs and finally to the pristine halls of Yale can quietly win over even the most guarded viewer.

This may be partly due to the eminent wonder of our two leading women, both of whom are popularly recognized for their socially and politically left-leaning work. Amy Adams, increasingly playing nuanced and thankless roles to magnificent effect, plays Bev, JD's mother, who would sound like a shoehorned welfare queen trope if I described her. Bev's drug abuse has made her an unreliable and ineffective mother, despite her strong beliefs about family duty and loyalty; no matter how old JD gets, his mother will constantly haunt his steps, invariably drawing his mind to the dangers awaiting him if he does not overcome his past. An almost unrecognizable Glenn Close, on the other hand, plays Mamaw, JD's maternal grandmother, letting out her full acting powers on a character that appears to be a caricature to anyone not familiar with Appalachian culture; those of us with experience will recognize the character immediately, and Close's powerhouse performance can then be seen as the force of nature it is. Without sacrificing her beliefs or values, Mamaw has almost single-handedly taken it upon herself to make life better for her grandchildren, raising them far from their ancestral home and instilling values to help them succeed in a world that would otherwise ignore their existence.

In case you couldn't tell, this movie is almost impossible to discuss without bearing lots of personal baggage, but decrying it without seeing it -- without trying to understand what it's doing -- is intellectually lazy and, I'd argue, deeply damaging to the art and the people it purports to represent. I've seen countless people call this movie offensive and inaccurate because that's what they've heard about the book. This movie is not the book. The closest it comes is in its plot, writ large, which dramatizes the sort of "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" upward climb that comprises the American Dream. And while that is of course a dangerous story to praise, I do think this movie invites more complex discussions about why the American Dream myth is problematic than we've had, culturally, in many years.

My major takeaways from the film were two amazing performances of characters so rarely seen in movies, a story of two amazing women and their impact on a troubled young man, and the stereotypically inspiring story of what you can do to better your life and the lives of your family if you have the opportunity. Its sense of place is authentic and infectious. Its sense of hope and trauma and joy and sorrow is more or less universal, even if the specifics sorely limit its actual scope. The film, wisely, avoids making any sweeping statements about the political or social makeup of impoverished Rust Belt blue-collar Republicans; in avoiding these troubling tendencies by Vance, Howard and Taylor have nonverbally and gracefully dismissed many of his published conclusions.

I would have preferred this film, however, to more actively engage the inherent absurdity of some of the elements it dramatizes. This may have given the film a clearer aesthetic and given it a purpose for existing (beyond being a Hallmark-level emotional journey from family trauma to self-help). Often during the film, I felt the urge to guffaw or even laugh aloud, but choked it down, feeling that it would be inappropriate of me, though I spent the formative years of my young adulthood in southern West Virginia and knew full well what was so funny and relatable about the portrayed drama. Like other movies about such a specific demographic, it can be difficult to know when, as an audience, we are appropriating their humor or appreciating it, laughing with them or laughing at them. My mind immediately goes to Lee Daniels's Precious or the transgressive works of John Waters, the kind of postmodern gothic that flirts with exploitation even as it revels in its unique power. That aesthetic would have been a more fascinating approach, for me, carrying more ideological possibilities and complexity.