﻿{"id":26372,"date":"2020-11-30T19:35:06","date_gmt":"2020-11-30T18:35:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=26372"},"modified":"2020-11-30T19:37:13","modified_gmt":"2020-11-30T18:37:13","slug":"a-review-of-the-new-film-hillbilly-elegy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=26372","title":{"rendered":"A review of the new film &#8220;Hillbilly Elegy&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>&#8216;Hillbilly&#8217; is a term (often derogatory) for people who live in rural, mountainous areas in the United States, primarily in southern Appalachia and the Ozarks and this film is set in such a community in Kentucky. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It does not examine why such Americans are so poor and disadvantaged but tells the (true life) story of how one young man (J D Vance) managed to escape such contraints to get to an ivy league university and become a venture capitalist and the movie is based on his best-selling book of the same title. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>J D survived and surmounted the tough love of his mother Bev (played by Amy Adams) and grandmother Mamaw (Glenn Close). It is a world of physical and substance abuse which, on occasions, makes for some uncomfortable viewing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>More than most, this film has divided opinion. Once one accepts that this is a personal story and not an insight into a whole community, the movie has a powerful and ultimately uplifting tale to tell. I thought the acting by Adams and Close &#8211; both of whom wear facial prosthetics and wigs &#8211; convincing and impressive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For me, the problem is in the direction, although this is work of the acclaimed Ron Howard. There are simply too many flash-backs (or flash-forwards depending on your perspective) so that the narrative is excessively disjointed and at time unclear.&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8216;Hillbilly&#8217; is a term (often derogatory) for people who live in rural, mountainous areas in the United States, primarily in southern Appalachia and the Ozarks and this film is set in such a community in Kentucky. It does not examine why such Americans are so poor and disadvantaged but tells the (true life) story of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26372"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26374,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26372\/revisions\/26374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}