"Hillbilly Elegy" dramatically uneven but Glenn Close's ferocious Mamaw makes it worthwhile

Hillbilly Elegy (2020)

An almost-unrelenting melodrama about someone rising from the adversity of their roots and seizing their potential, “Hillbilly Elegy” is probably about as tough and unflinching a film Ron Howard (2018's "Solo: A Star Wars Story") will ever make. Based on a 2016 memoir by J.D. Vance, the film ends up being contradictory as a cinematic treatment. It feels personal and homegrown, but it also feels told in broad strokes. Without condescending toward a disenfranchised working-class community (just don’t say the “R” word), it still strains with over-the-top histrionics and speechifying (both major recipes for award grabs). Then again, a story involving self-destruction through abuse, drug addiction, and the constant bottoming out doesn’t always call for quiet, restrained subtlety. “Hillbilly Elegy” is well-intended misery lit on film that might be too pat, but it can be affecting and worthwhile as a powerhouse acting showcase.

Skipping episodically between 1997 and 2011, the film, written by Vanessa Taylor (2017’s “The Shape of Water”), is told from the point-of-view of the author, J.D. Vance, played by Owen Asztalos and Gabriel Basso in the respective years. With his family of “hill people” descending from and spending their summers in the Kentucky Appalachians, J.D. grew up in the depressed Ohio town of Middletown with mother Bev (Amy Adams) and older sister Lindsay (Haley Bennett), and his grandparents, the tough-as-nails Mamaw (Glenn Close) and aloof Papaw (Bo Hopkins), right down the street. As Bev makes poor decisions with men and loses her nursing job due to pilfering drugs, J.D. would end up living with Mamaw, who would, despite her poor health, shape him into the man he would become. After graduating high school, joining the Marines, serving in Iraq, and graduating from Ohio State, J.D. puts himself through Yale Law School in 2011. His opportunity to land an important internship at a firm during Interview Week is potentially put on hold when he gets a call from Lindsay, telling him that their mother is in the hospital from a heroin overdose. Making a choice, J.D. rushes to Ohio to get Bev the help she needs.

The focal point of “Hillbilly Elegy” is J.D. and his rags-to-riches tale. While no one should be derided for overcoming a difficult home life and changing their life, the arc on screen feels disjointed and simplified, as if key scenes are missing after the boy begins living with Mamaw. Mamaw’s tough love and advice to study hard certainly point her grandson in the right direction, but what about the rest of J.D.’s determined journey to break from his family’s cycle? For good measure, Mamaw does utter a platitude, “Where we come from is who we are, but we choose every day who we become,” which seems to be the film’s thematic throughline. Casting director Carmen Cuba does deserve a raise for finding two very similar-looking actors to play J.D. at different ages, making the viewer almost assume Ron Howard went the whole "Boyhood" routine and shot over the span of a decade. Gabriel Basso (2013’s “The Kings of Summer”) is fine as college-aged J.D., who has made a better life for himself. As young J.D., newcomer Owen Asztalos is even better, laying the groundwork and conveying the appropriate emotions as an adolescent who has been abused and then acts out. 

A deglamorized Amy Adams is surely going for it and letting it rip as the cruel and unstable Bev, playing her performance to the rafters and sucking all the oxygen out of a scene. Through no fault of her own, the way in which Bev has been written only supplies Adams with one note and little in between the outbursts. When J.D. brings up how her boyfriends are like flavors of the week in the car, Bev snaps behind the wheel, threatens to crash the car, nearly does so, and then drags him out from a stranger’s home, where J.D. uses the phone to call the police. Immediately after Bev’s father dies, the very next scene has her taking pain medication from her patients in the hospital, rollerskating through the hospital on a high, and saying goodbye to her gainful employment. There just aren’t enough scenes to carve out an actual understanding for Bev or show her humanity and unfulfilled potential. Even through the fractured storytelling, one expects for there to be more that informs Bev’s ongoing battle with opioids or how she, according to J.D., was the smartest person he ever met. This is said more than once, but rather than it coming across that way, we have to take the voice-over narration’s word for it.

Glenn Close manages to find a heartbeat and a soul in a way Amy Adams cannot, despite the raw efforts of an otherwise great actress. Without her wig, liver-spotted skin, oversized glasses, and a lit cigarette between her fingers taking the attention off her performance at all times, Close is a ferocious force—and fun to watch—as the no-nonsense Mamaw. Yes, she is acting and chain-smoking up a storm, but Close more convincingly loses herself in this larger-than-life being to strike an emotional chord. Also, based on the footage of the real Mamaw during the end credits, she is a mirror image. In supporting roles, Freida Pinto has to literally phone in her performance but does her best as J.D.’s supportive girlfriend Usha, also a law student, while Haley Bennett brings more nuance to the role of J.D.’s sister Lindsay than the script allows. 

While Ron Howard is a humane—some might say “safe”—director and perhaps too soft of a fit for the material, he still makes a solid, workmanlike film. Without falling into artifice, Howard does capture an authentic sense of place by shooting on location in Ohio neighborhoods. Hollywoodized prestige bait or not, “Hillbilly Elegy” seems to already be the target of cynical, needlessly harsh jeering as if it’s cool to hate it. While it may be too dramatically uneven to move mountains as an emotional catharsis, the film is made watchable by vanity-free performances that range from showy to showiest. If you want understatement, you can probably kiss Mamaw where the sun don’t shine or the lit end of her Virginia Slim.

Grade: B -

Netflix is releasing “Hillbilly Elegy” (116 min.) into theaters November 10, 2020 and to streaming on November 24, 2020.