Hillbilly Elegy - 2 nominations

 

Best Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling Eryn Krueger Mekash  Matthew W. Mungle  Patricia Dehaney

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role - Glenn Close

I loved the book.  Hillbilly Elegy is based on the true story of JD Vance who grew up in Appalachia with a drug addict mother who has bouts of sobriety but can't get out of her own way; and a strong grandmother who was there for him when life got too hard.  In the film, JD is called back home to help his mother right at the moment when he has the most important interview of his life out of Yale Law School.  JD walks the tense line between escaping and managing his difficult past.  

What makes the book extraordinarily beautiful is how carefully and intentionally Vance looks at his childhood.  This film attempts that, but then adds in this weird high stakes "which life will he choose"/"will he make it in time" which is totally unnecessary to the story.  But when the film is focusing on his family and his childhood, we get a glimpse into a life about which most of us know very little.  The movie has a lot to teach us about the cycle of poverty and how difficult it is to escape, even when one is ready to "lift himself up by the bootstraps."

The performances are unsurprisingly magnificent - Amy Adams and Glenn Close deliver sensitive and difficult portrayals of women doing their best in a truly hard life.  I dearly hope that Close will win her first Oscar this year (her 8th nomination with no wins, the most for an acting category), ironically, she is up against Olivia Coleman who nabbed the Oscar from Close's clutches the last time they went head to head in 2019.

A lot of critics viciously panned this film (it has a 26% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics, while at the same time, has an audience score of 84%).  If you know nothing about the book, it is just fine and worth watching if you can't find something else.  I don't think it deserved the hate it got, but I don't think it made the most of the real story.  If I had known absolutely nothing about the book, I think I would have said it was good enough to spend a couple of hours watching it, but wouldn't have insisted that everyone I know watch it immediately (like I do with Nomadland and One Night in Miami, seriously, have you watched those yet???)

Watch the trailer here.