'Hillbilly Elegy' is the Netflix produced film adaptation of the best selling 2016 memoir of the same title by J.D. Vance. You might remember this book as one all the liberal commentators seemed to be recommended costal peoples to read to better understand "the Trump voter" after The Donald's surprise victory in that years presidential election. Yes that is "east coast elites" telling people they need to read a book with "hillbilly" in the title to understand the typical Trump voter, this attitude is one of the reasons why they lost. Interestingly author Vance was quite critical of Trump at the time, but has noticeably changed his tune after recently announcing his run for the Republican senate nomination in Ohio.
This is the story of a young mans difficult growing up in southern Ohio and how with the help of his grandmother he changed his course in life and ultimately ended up at Yale Law School. It is also the story of his mothers substance abuse, his grandmothers difficult marriage, and the breaking of a multi generational cycle of self abuse. It's inspiring stuff, it has great actors like Amy Adams and Glenn Close in the cast and was directed by the very able Ron Howard.... yet critics seem to hate this movie, it's got a 26% rating on Rotten Tomato's and 38 on Metacritc.
I went in quite skeptical, I had heard bad things, but this film totally won me over. Yes it is at times hokey, and Glenn Close's performance earned her both Oscar and Razzie nominations and it's the kind of performance where that make sense. Evoking a certain way of life, a certain kind of person, can also evoke the satire or caricature of that group.
I spent two years among a similar kind of people on my LDS mission to the mid south, a lot of this felt familiar, it rang true, I've meet a lot of people like this. It seems a major factor in ones reception to the film is likely how much real contact you've had with, or empathy you feel towards, what might be called 'blue collar, hillbilly types' and I think the moves 82% audience score bellies that. Despite some obvious triteness I was surprised how much I really enjoyed watching this movie. ***1/2
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