What to know about Hillbilly Elegy, based on the J.D. Vance memoir

WASHINGTON - Before Mr J.D. Vance became

the Republican vice-presidential nominee

or even ventured into politics, he was best known as the author of Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir about growing up in the Rust Belt and Appalachia.

Published in 2016, the book became a surprise bestseller, offering one kind of answer to those searching for an explanation for Donald Trump’s presidential victory and trying to understand the experience of impoverished white Americans.

The success of Mr Vance’s book led to a movie adaptation with Imagine Entertainment winning the film rights in 2017. Netflix eventually spent a reported US$45 million (S$60 million) to finance the movie, which had a limited theatrical release in November 2020 before moving to streaming soon after. Unlike the book, the film received scathing reviews from critics.

Here is what to know about the movie:

Who made Hillbilly Elegy? Who stars in it?

Directed by Ron Howard with Mr Vance getting an executive producer credit, the film stars Gabriel Basso as Mr Vance. Glenn Close plays his grandmother, Mamaw, a loud, gruff but caring matriarch, and Amy Adams is his mother, Bev, who grapples with mental health issues and substance abuse. The cast includes Freida Pinto as Mr Vance’s wife Usha.

Parts of the film were shot in Middletown, Ohio, where Mr Vance grew up, as well as in Georgia, because of the state’s generous tax incentives.

What is Hillbilly Elegy about?

The film mostly follows Mr Vance’s memoir. It begins with a younger Vance (played by Owen Asztalos) biking along a dirt path, while an older Vance narrates his love for the hill country of Jackson, Kentucky. Alternating between past and present, the film toggles between Mr Vance’s unstable childhood growing up with Mamaw and a mother struggling with addiction and his adult years as a student at Yale Law School.

While competing for a prestigious summer internship, Mr Vance receives a call from his sister Lindsay (Haley Bennett), who asks him to return home to care for his mother, who has been hospitalised after overdosing on heroin.

How close are the film and book?

The film deviates from the memoir in some key respects. In the book, Mr Vance shows his appreciation for his time at Yale, saying that professors and classmates were “genuinely interested” in him. “Yale made me feel, for the first time in my life, that others viewed my life with intrigue,” he wrote.

But in the film, as critic Alissa Wilkinson pointed out when she was at Vox, Mr Vance attends a fancy dinner party where law students and attorneys treat his background with condescension.

The film also avoids some of the more political ideas put forward in the book, including the notion that some of Mr Vance’s family and acquaintances have themselves to blame for their lack of success. Instead, the film concentrates on Mr Vance’s journey from poverty to prestige and his mother’s experience with addiction.

How did critics react?

Most critics found the movie unsatisfactory, saying it caricatured its subjects and reduced real-life problems to melodrama. After its release, the movie garnered a measly 25 per cent fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes, the film-review aggregator.

In The New York Times, Mr A.O. Scott wrote that “it can be hard to figure out what story the filmmakers think they should be telling”. At The New Yorker, Mr Richard Brody said that the “film’s stagings, images, and tones are as formless and as vague as its characters’ mental lives”.

And in Vox, Ms Wilkinson (who is now at the Times) skewered the film as “a movie designed to let comfortable white liberals feel like they have learned something, and thus have done something meaningful to make the world a better, more inclusive place”.

How did audiences react?

Viewers who logged onto Rotten Tomatoes gave it an 82 per cent fresh rating, and the week it was released on Netflix, it was the seventh-most streamed programme on any site.

Did it win any awards?

For her performance, Close was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She was also nominated for a Razzie for worst supporting actress.

In the end, she did not win any of those, though she did collect a handful of film festival prizes. Adams was nominated for best actress at the SAGs but went home empty-handed.

How to watch:

Hillbilly Elegy is available exclusively on Netflix. It is rated R and the running time is one hour 56 minutes. NYTIMES