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| Review: Hillbilly Elegy Movie 2020 |
Review: Hillbilly Elegy Movie 2020. The name of J. D. Vance and the title of his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, which tells about his childhood that is not very familiar to people outside the United States.
However, when it was released in 2016 – ahead of the presidential election in the United States, Vance's book received a lot of attention for its story about the hillbillies, who are known as a group of white Americans who are often judged as conservative and have a tough character and an everyday temperament.
Many people think that Vance's portrayal of hillbillies in his memoirs is superficial. Despite the spotlight and controversy, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis was a commercial success, becoming one of the bestsellers of 2016 and 2017, popularizing Vance's name, and, of course, gaining Hollywood influence to be adapted into a feature movie.
Review: Hillbilly Elegy Movie 2020, Synopsis
With a story script by Vanessa Taylor (The Shape of Water, 2017), Vance's memoir is packaged into a story about how a child who was born from a harsh and "backward" environment then managed to become an educated and advanced figure.
As a child, JD Vance (Owen Asztalos) and his sister, Lindsay Vance (Haley Bennett), lived with their mother, Beverly Vance (Amy Adams), who was often stuck in various problems in her life – from work problems to romance. , to become drug addicts and drug addicts.
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| Review: Hillbilly Elegy Movie 2020 |
Her mother's temperament is clearly influenced by her environment in Middletown, Ohio, United States, which is a background where people with low levels of education live.
Beverly Vance's relationship with her mother, Bonnie Vance (Glenn Close), also has its share. Bonnie Vance is often firm and tough in showing her affection for her children.
Movie Reviews
It is easy enough to see the various things that underlie the criticism that comes to the story of poverty that Vance presents in his book through the presentation of the story of Hillbilly Elegy.
This movie does touch the problem of the condition of an area where poverty and low levels of education have become a culture that is ingrained in every generation.
However, instead of trying to explore the problem – or at least glimpse the condition, Hillbilly Elegy prefers to present it through a family melodrama story that often feels monotonous.
The story script from Taylor opens the story of how Bonnie Vance's character became pregnant and had her first child at the age of 13 and how Beverly Vance's character, who initially had promising achievements in school, ended up failing after failing due to pregnancy in her youth.
The conflict that later developed between the three generations of the Vance family, unfortunately, was then more often presented in the form of shouts and anger from each family member than worked into a complete story.
The direction that director Ron Howard (Solo: A Star Wars Story, 2018) gave wasn't really that bad.
The choice to present the life story of JD Vance's character in two narrative timelines – scenes based on conflict set in the present with flashbacks to relevant events in the past – proved to be quite effective in providing an in-depth exploration of the story.
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Unfortunately, the monotony of the story offered by Hillbilly Elegy often makes it appear like an ordinary drama that is more concerned with momentum than stories that are more emotionally binding.
The story of zero to hero that is formed from the career journey of J. D. Vance's character is also often sidelined because of the excavation of his character which tends to sink when compared to the characters of Bonnie Vance and Beverly Vance.
Closing
Howard, of course, was lucky to have Adams and Close in his movie acting department. Although their acting skills are more often spent presenting the feud between the mother and daughter characters – which involves a lot of screaming, insulting, and swearing scenes, Adams and Close are at least able to give a strong soul to the characters they play.
Close, in particular, manages to present two personalities who are hard but so gentle and loving at the same time as Bonnie Vance's character.
Close straightforwardly presents the emotional flow felt by the characters through faces that are able to say a lot even without the presence of accompanying dialogue.
The appearance of Bennett, Gabriel Basso – who played the adult J. D. Vance, Aszlatos, and Freida Pinto did not contribute much thanks to the minimalistic exploration of the story presented to the characters they played.
Even so, despite the various problems that can be felt present in the Hillbilly Elegy narrative, the acting department of this movie is definitely one element that can be executed without significant problems.
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