Hillbilly Elegy: The BRWC Review

24th November 2020

Hillbilly Elegy: The BRWC Review – J. D. Vance (Gabriel Vasso) is a Yale graduate who had a poor upbringing wrought with troubles. His mother, Bev (Amy Adams) was a nurse, but her addiction to drugs led her down a bad road with psychological problems and it eventually fell on J. D.’s grandmother, lovingly known as Mawmaw (Glenn Close) to look after him. Unfortunately, Mawmaw was just as tough even without the drug abuse and family issues.

However, J. D. still grew up well adjusted and found, Usha (Freida Pinto), a woman he loves very much. He just became afraid of what people would think of him if they found out about his family’s problems.

Hillbilly Elegy is a film directed by Ron Howard and based on J. D. Vance’s best-selling book. Tipped for Oscar glory with Close and Adams leading the charge with their incredible careers showing just how good they could be, it seemed like nothing could go wrong. The problem is that Hillbilly Elegy is so dull.

Without having read the book, it’s hard to say what made it so great that it was deemed worthy of so much attention from the film industry. However, after seeing the film it seems that all the best bits of what made the book so worthy must have been left out.

Vance’s own pride of having come from nothing to make something of himself through going to college is admirable, even if some critics claim that he is not as well equipped to talk about working class America. The problem is that it seems like the film is aiming at an Oscar audience and saying that its subject went through much harder times than anybody else to get where he is today.

It’s not to say that there should have been some heightened melodrama in the telling of Vance’s story. It’s just that there have surely been some people who have had it so much worse and done so much more.

There’s no doubt that J. D. Vance has a bright future ahead of him with a family that he loves, but the story of his young life on the big screen just doesn’t do justice to how he may feel about what he’s gone through to get the life he always wanted.

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