Posted on 07/17/2024 2:34:07 PM PDT by mowowie
My GF and myself are planning on watching thos movie tonight on netflix to get a better grasp on J.D.
Is it worth the 2 hours?
“I’m a proud hillbilly.“
________
My mother who grew up hillbilly in Higdon Alabama on Sand Mountain always said with a smile on her face, “I’m proud to be a hillbilly because you know I am sincere.” Her grandfather settled Higdon...it’s hardly populated. She moved to Chattanooga with her family as a teen and she went to college and ended up working for the FBI in Chicago where I was born. We moved back to Chattanooga when I was a child and I always enjoyed going to the large family reunions and visiting relatives in Higdon. A whole different world. Fond memories.
What ever happened to the Viking Kitty?
I haven't read the book, but the movie DEFINITELY belongs in one of those "so bad its good" categories where the film is UNintentionally hilarious.
I felt bad for laughing at the J.D. Vance grandma character ("MawMaw") after I found out at the end of the film that she was based on his actual, real-life grandma.
Jed Clampett & clan would take one look at this film's characters and go "Dude, take it down a notch"
My one thought while watching it last night was about how bad the Hollywood actors must be feeling by now promoting Vance.
Thank You
That's the weird thing about the movie, it never shows you how Vance got from Point A to Point B. Supposedly the book has some kind of "message" about "picking yourself up by your bootstraps", but this "message" is totally absent from the movie. It's just random scenes of teenage hillbilly Vance with his wacked out family intercut with random scenes of young adult Harvard-educated lawyer Vance in "present day"
Whoever edited the film together seems to have been on the drugs that Vance's hillbilly Mama Amy Adams was on throughout the movie.
The movie was good, watched last night. Just ordered the book. He had a very difficult upbringing. Thank God for his Mamaw. If he can overcome his youth and pull himself by his bootstraps, he will make a great VP and great to carry the torch beyond.
>> Alex Haley gave lots of interviews too. Didn’t make it so. <<
It is indeed a "factual" retelling of his upbringing from HIS point of view.
I would say that puts the movie in the same category to how accurate "Mommy Dearest" is to the real life Joan Crawford. Faye Dunaway IS Joan Crawford... from her stepdaughter's point of view, anyway.
I don’t think his portrayal of his personal life has been disputed. Some people in Appalachia have taken issue if his portrayal of the people there generally.
Before seeing the film, I wondered how the heck Glenn Close could be up for "Best Actress" and "Worst Actress" for the SAME role. It's only the third time in film history that that happened.
After seeing the film, I understood exactly why. Glenn Close stole every scene she was in and completely transformed herself for the role. She IS "MawMaw"!
Did vance join the marines & after he was discharged attend the Ohio State U on the GI Bill?
It’s interesting that you picked Mommy Dearest because literally NOBODY agrees with anything Christina wrote in that. Including her sister whose abuse was supposedly chronicled in the book.
Pretty awesome movie though. I don’t anybody did unhinged as well as Faye. Ruined her career.
the book is worth reading, but the movie is unwatchable crap ...
Don't you find it at least mildly interesting that a "lamentation" has suddenly become the talk of the town?
It's not quite a palindrome because "El" does not change, but you can see the simple process for how an elegy [אלגיה] becomes a charge to man to be redeemed [היגאל].
First the gimel moves to the front, then the yud, then the hei:
אלגיה היגאל
It (elegy, אלגיה) is a feminine word, but the phrasing here out the gate matches the [masculine] gender to מונח ("term, specific word"):
"...אֵלֶגְיָה הוא מונח"
Klein's covers the specific word...
אֶלֶגְיָה f.n. FW elegy. [Gk. elegeia, short for elegeia ode (= an elegiac song). cp. ‘elegy’ and ‘elogium’ in my CEDEL.]
...but Wiktionary doesn't recognize it. Not surprising, as it's a Hebrew word borrowed from the Greek.
Therefore, when I dropped 'elegy' [אלגיה] into the search box, its top suggestion called for
אליהו, Elijah
followed by a dropdown menu with
אליה (well maybe he spells it differently these days, without a vav)
אלרגיה (makes sense, people have become downright... allergic)
אליהו הנבֿיא (hey why not try again in full, in Yiddish, the 'language of the Jews')
אליהם (yeah but who's been paying attention, to receive word)
אליהן (the midwives at least, as the Exo 1:17 quotation on that page informs*)
*Might as well expand on that a bit:
17 But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded unto them [אליהן], but saved the men children alive.
18 And the king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said unto them, Why have ye done this thing, and have saved the men children alive?
19 And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them.
Isn't that the craziest thing, though? Word of a male Deliverer had been spreading throughout the camp -- perhaps like wildfire -- so what did Pharaoh do?
Put out a decree to cast all of the male deliveries into the river.
That's not just a federal offense ('"no one is above the law"), it was proof that hillbilly Foghorn Leghorn had it exactly right all along when he lamented,
"That boy -- I say that boy is about as sharp as a bowling ball."
Well, there's always next year, in
JERUSALEM
(What the crowds are chanting.)
Who had "free" on their Bingo cards?
Yes, I was being sarcastic by equating Obama’s book to Vance’s.
Hahahahaha!
The film version would probably be forgotten as some sleazy "tell all" TV movie if it weren't for Faye Dunaway's insane performance. She was Joan Crawford on steroids.
Same thing with Glenn Close playing J.D.'s grandma. Half her lines in that movie are b@t$hit crazy, and her delivery makes it even more over the top.
I'm not sure what J.D. Vance thought of Ron Howard's take on his memoirs, but IMO Howard took a mediocre "rags to riches, escape from trailer park poverty" memoir and cranked it up to 11.
I don't want to get into it at this hour, but it's worth separating two issues here. As a matter of film criticism, there was a great deal of discussion of Amy Adams' and Glenn Close's performances, with some critics applauding and others criticizing overacting. That discussion extended to Ron Howard and the critique that he and his two leading ladies had come down with Oscar bait disease. This is a long running debate in MovieLand about the dangers of playing with trauma porn in movies.
The parallel issue, however, is whether this aspect of the movie should be read as a critique of hillbilly culture. IMHO, no. This has to do with the depiction of alcoholism, drug addiction and family trauma. The Amy Adams character may have been the daughter of Appalachian transplants, but she was a nurse in a small city hospital in southern Ohio who got messed up with prescription drugs, to which she had access at the hospital. You can set that story anywhere.
We've had some long discussions on FR about movies dealing with alcoholism and addiction. There are a lot of them. Some of them are very good. Some of them make the Amy Adams and Glenn Close characters in Hillbilly Elegy look tame. In others, the addiction and codependency issues are played with restraint. High bottom and low bottom is a real distinction. What will ring true to any viewer will depend on personal experiences and therefore differing points of view. 32 years for me. I've been to a lot of meetings. I didn't bat an eye at anything in Hillbilly Elegy. I'm just grateful that I got out easier, and I've heard a lot worse. Go to a big city meeting in the wrong part of town for an eye opener -- and you can hear the same thing in the upscale suburbs as well, just not with the same frequency because people living in million dollar homes tend not to have a lot of violent felonies and prison time on their records.
In the context of movies, this problem is compounded by the risks of sensationalized stereotyping for viewers who have never been through it personally. Trauma porn sells tickets. Did Hillbilly Elegy stray over the line? Maybe we should have another thread soon about movies about alcoholism. There have been some honorable additions to the canon in the last couple of years and the idea has been rattling around in my head for the movie ping list, but I've been waiting for Outrun. IMHO, Saoirsa Ronan is one of the best of the rising young actresses, and I'm looking forward to seeing her take. I'll just note that alcoholism and addiction are issues that movie industry people know a great deal about.
My hubby and I thought it was pretty good, too.
I tried to view on Netflix but it would not show as available
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