Review: "Hillbilly Elegy"

How do you translate to the screen a book that’s not so much a narrative memoir as an evocation of a place, a culture and a mindset? This was the challenge facing director Ron Howard and screenwriter Vanessa Taylor (“The Shape of Water”) in translating J.D. Vance’s best-seller, “Hillbilly Elegy.”

The path they chose was probably the best one laid before them, resulting in a solid if somewhat constructed-feeling look at one man’s journey from the hollers of Appalachian Kentucky to Yale Law School graduate. It boasts a pair of spectacular performances by Glenn Close and Amy Adams, both of whom should get awards notice.

The book came out in 2016 and was quickly tabbed as a political artifact, a wayfinder to the reason why many rural, white lower-class voters chose the way they did. The filmmakers behind “Hillbilly Elegy” wisely eschew any outright political machinations, rightly guessing that any such attempt would come across as a bunch of Hollywood leftists looking down their noses at a bunch of hicks.

Indeed, the biggest strength of the film is that it approaches its characters at eye level. The main dynamic centers around the trio of Vance himself -- played by Gabriel Basso and Owen Asztalos in his 20s and teens, respectively -- his mother, Bev (Adams), and grandmother (Close).

The family moved north to Middletown, Ohio, when J.D. was small, but he spent most of his childhood summers in Kentucky and that’s where their roots lie. The Vances are dirt poor living among others just so, but every clan holds firmly to the belief they’re a bit better than their neighbors.

The story shifts back and forth between the years of J.D.’s childhood and a few days in his life in law school, bucking for an internship at a top Washington D.C. firm. In the latter frame, his motivation is both practical -- he needs the money from a high-end gig to make up the shortfall in his financial aid -- and personal, wanting to stay with his girlfriend, Usha (Freida Pinto), an Indian-American who already has a job lined up there.

In the earlier timeframe, J.D. ping-pongs back and forth between his mom and “Meemaw,” preferring the stability of the latter but emotionally tethered to the former. Bev is a nurse who lost her job due to drug addiction, and the film is unrelenting in depicting how a broken person can be simultaneously fiercely protective and outright abusive of their child.

His only protection is Meemaw, who has a corrosive tongue and rude manner but understands that family is the only thing that really matters. Close is spot-on playing a certain Southern type, the chain-smoking old lady with crazy witch hair who can barely walk but will pin anyone to their spot with a flinty stare and a few acid words.

In the later timeframe, set around 2011, the guileless but graceless J.D. tries to fit in with snooty Beltway types, not knowing the difference between varieties of white wine or which piece of silverware to use at a fancy dinner. At the same time he is summoned back to Ohio to deal with his mom’s latest overdose, as his sister (Haley Bennett) has her own passel of kids and responsibilities now.

We can practically feel the weight of the massive chip on J.D.’s shoulder, a guy who wants to do the right thing but feels blocked at every turn. Basso seems to positively slump onscreen before our eyes. He owes a responsibility to his mother, even though she neglected and abused him horribly, and a loyalty to Meemaw’s edict about being the leader of the family after she’s gone.

There are a lot of things to admire about “Hillbilly Elegy.” It really sings when it focuses on the twisted but unshakeable triad of J.D. and the two women who raised him. It also makes a genuine and largely successful attempt to portray the sorts of folks people in showbiz and politics usually see as zoological exhibits.

It’s also one of those movies where the lead character tends to be the least interesting person in the room. So anytime we wander too far from Bev’s pitiful, manipulative antics or Meemaw’s iron rule, the movie loses air.

Still, Howard, Taylor and company deserve credit for making this movie in the first place, and making it in a way that feels true to the author and the book he wrote. We live in a time where so many are ruled by hatred and fear, and here’s a film filled with those things -- but feels like a small spring of hope.

Video review: "Still Alice"

Julianne Moore gave the performance of the year in 2014 for her deeply affecting portrait of a woman battling early onset Alzheimer’s in “Still Alice.” She won an Oscar for it -- and every other award on the planet, it seems -- and deserved to.

We’ve seen this sort of role before: Julie Christie in “Away from Her,” for instance. But those movies have usually been about characters in the twilight of their lives. Here we saw a woman in her prime, one who has defined herself by her prodigious intellect, watching her semblance of self slip through her fingers like grains of rice.

She plays Alice Howland, a professor of linguistics at Columbia University. She has a devoted husband (Alec Baldwin), three adult children and is at the pinnacle of her career. Since she is so intelligent, Alice is not unaware that her mental grasp is slipping. She gets lost while jogging around campus, cannot place familiar words, and so on.

Writer/director team (and real-life couple) Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland treat their characters with tenderness and respect. There is not a single sappy moment or false emotion in the entire film.

(I feel compelled to point out that Glatzer wrote and shot the film while enduring his own brave medical struggle with Lou Gehrig’s disease. He passed away this March.)

Many people tend to shy away from these sorts of movies of characters enduring tremendous physical and spiritual struggles. They have so much pain in their own lives, they don’t feel like witnessing more, even if fictional.

But be brave. “Still Alice” is one of the most life-affirming movies I’ve ever seen. There is beauty and truth in that aching.

Video extras are merely adequate, and are the same for Blu-ray and DVD versions.

There are three deleted scenes, and three making-of featurettes: “Directing Alice,” “Finding Alice” and “Interview with Composer Ilan Eshkeri.”

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Review: "Still Alice"

“Still Alice” has been the phantom of the awards season, much talked about but rarely seen. (At least outside of L.A. and New York.)

Sony, which had a few problems awhile back you may have heard about, declined to screen the film for many regional critic groups, including here in Indiana. And yet star Julianne Moore has been running the table during the awards cycle, racking up a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild, among other prizes, and is now seen as a mortal lock to take home the Oscar.

So I went into a press screening in a state that could best be described as a combination of high anticipation and annoyance. I came out knowing I had just seen the finest performance of the year --actor or actress, lead or supporting -- as well as one of the best movies of 2014.

Moore plays Alice Howland, a fantastically successful woman who is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease. A linguistics professor at Columbia University who has always defined herself by her titanic intellect, Alice is forced to deal with rapidly losing her ability to remember words, her lifetime of research, and eventually simple things like the location of the bathroom or the name of her eldest child.

It’s the performance of a career, as Moore is utterly convincing as Alice rages, despairs, fights and eventually comes to accept her fate -- “Mastering,” as she puts it, “the art of losing.”

“I wish I had a cancer,” she says at one point, and she means it. “I wouldn’t feel so ashamed.”

Writer/director team Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland previously made the little-seen (but quite good) “The Last of Robin Hood” a couple of years ago. In adapting the novel by Lisa Genova, they eschew an emphasis on plot and secondary characters, dumping any distractions to focus on their star’s incredible screen presence.

If you think “Still Alice” falls into the sappy “disease of the week” type of filmmaking, then I’m here to tell you there is not a single moment that is maudlin or contrived. We never catch Moore playing to the cameras or exaggerating a moment. If anything, she keeps things close to her vest, as a woman with a strong internal dialogue would.

For instance, her diagnosis is not a complete shock to her. Alice is smart enough to know that she’s been slipping, e.g., having to pause during a lecture to recall the term “wordstock.” Not exactly surprising, given its obscurity. But then she gets lost while jogging on the university campus, or introduces herself to her son’s new girlfriend moments after previously doing so.

Alec Baldwin plays her husband, John, and Kristen Stewart, Kate Bosworth and Hunter Parrish play their children. All give trim and tidy performances, in the sorts of roles that are written to showcase the leading actress. The kids don’t have too much identity on their own, other than Stewart is an aspiring actress who feels unsupported, and Bosworth is her mother’s spitting image in terms of drive and ambition.

Baldwin is quite adept as the husband, a man who must balance his genuine devotion to his wife with his own considerable professional aspirations. It’s a smart and observant take on the loved ones of those who are dying, who must give them all the care and support they need, while also making their own plans for what comes after. How crushing, how true.

I also quite admired Stephen Kunken as Alice’s doctor, who strikes a good balance between being a clinician, emotional bulwark and booster.

Having been so frustrated at being denied the chance to see “Still Alice,” I’m now over the moon that I finally have. What craftsmanship, dedication and poise in this indelible portrait.