“Hillbilly Elegy” (which drops Tuesday on Netflix) provides yet more evidence that, when it comes to genres that confine rather than unleash cinematic creativity, superhero movies and other franchises have nothing on adaptations of memoirs by living public figures. The director’s imagination is restricted by the blueprint set forth by the author-slash-protagonist—who is also available to complain, even publicly, about departures from the printed record. The result, often, is movies that are devoid of moral complexity, psychological depth, and social purview. In “Hillbilly Elegy,” which is directed by Ron Howard and based on the best-selling memoir by J. D. Vance, the gap between artistic imagination and informational dosing is even more apparent than in other recent examples of the genre (such as “Just Mercy,” which is nonetheless a far better film)—and, peculiarly, the thinness of the adaptation arises not only from where the movie doesn’t go beyond the book but also from what, of its source material, it chooses to leave out.
The movie is framed in flashbacks, starting in the past but apostrophized by the voice-over reminiscences of the character J.D. (played, as an adult, by Gabriel Basso), who explains that he has lived most of his life in Ohio but has his roots, and his pleasures, deep in his ancestral hill country of Jackson, Kentucky, where he spent his joyful childhood summers. There, he’s seen as a soft and chubby child of about ten (played at that age by Owen Asztalos), pedalling to his cherished swimming hole, where his reverie—floating on his back in the lambent sunlight—is interrupted by a trio of older, more muscular boys who dunk him and hold him terrifyingly underwater. On shore, one of them makes a sexual remark about J.D.’s mother; he charges them and gets punched out—but, at that moment, three men from his family intervene (confirming J.D.’s warm voice-over reminiscence about his family having his back), rescuing him and beating up one of his tormentors. The men then bring him back to the house, which is being packed up: the family is returning home to Ohio, and young J.D. bewilderedly asks his grandmother, called Mamaw (and played by Glenn Close), why she ever moved away from that wonderful place. Her daughter, J.D.’s mother, Bev (Amy Adams), gives the answer: “Because when you’re knocked up at thirteen, you get the hell out of Dodge, that’s why.”
Article by: Richard Brody for the New Yorker.
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