“Today people look at me, at my job and my Ivy League credentials, and assume that I’m some sort of genius, that only a truly extraordinary person could have made it to where I am today. With all due respect to those people, I think that theory is a load of bullshit. Whatever.”
The election is over, the results are in, and he won. For the first time since George W. Bush’s victory in the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election, AP has projected the Republican Party to have won a majority of the popular vote. The people have spoken, and Donald J. Trump will become only the second president in history to have served two non-consecutive terms (the other was Democrat Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th President). But stepping back, there was another key winner of the election, and that was Trump’s running mate: the future 50th Vice President of the United States, JDVance.
While he entered into politics with his victory in the 2022 Ohio Senate election, he first became well known with the publication of his 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.” Director Ron Howard (who also made the 2001 Best Picture winner “A Beautiful Mind”) sought to create a film adaptation of the book. After it was released in 2020 it further raised Vance’s national profile. While he directly opposed Donald Trump’s election in 2016, privately calling him “America’s Hitler,” Vance soon pivoted towards supporting the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement and by 2022 he was willing to tout Trump’s endorsement as a badge of honor.
The butterfly effect from this movie being released to positive acclaim has directly and irrevocably altered the foundations of American democracy. This Netflix original film is unquestionably the most impactful and consequential American political film of the 2020s so far, and for that, it must earn recognition. It will go down in the history books among such movies as 2006’s “An Inconvenient Truth” (the origin of our modern discussion of climate change and debatably the reason former Vice President Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize), and 2008’s “Hillary: The Movie” (which directly led to Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC)) as films that will have changed America for generations to come. It makes one wonder: “Just who the hell is this guy?”
The story follows Vance’s early life (where he was played by Gabriel Basso) and upbringing in Appalachia when his mother Bev (played by Amy Adams) routinely abused him and became addicted to stolen prescription drugs. He was taken in by his “Mamaw” (played by the great Glenn Close in an Oscar nominated performance for Best Supporting Actress), who raised him to have a better future. He joined the Marines and attended Yale, where he met his wife, Usha (played by Freida Pinto). Many years later, he returns to Ohio and sends his now heroin-addicted mother to rehab. He later changes his last name from Hamel to Vance, which was his Grandmother’s maiden name.
While Vance may have had a very rough childhood in Appalachia, the thing that struck me the most about the film was how his upbringing seems to directly contradict his party’s platform. One would think he would support universal healthcare after having to forcibly put his mother into rehab. One would think he would advocate for financial support for single mothers and caregivers like his Mamaw. One would even think that he would support helping victims of teen pregnancies, like his Mamaw, who had to run away from home pregnant at the age of 13 because her parents disowned her. However, it remains to be seen how the second Trump administration will directly address these issues.
The current Secretary of the Department of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, stated in an interview with Bill Maher, “In Harvard, I met a lot of people like [Vance], who would say anything they needed to get ahead.”
By allying himself as a young acolyte to Trump, he will now be just one heartbeat away from being the leader of the free world.
In the end, this is supposed to be a review of this film, however inseparable it is from its subject. Howard stated in an interview with Variety that he was “Surprised and concerned by a lot of the rhetoric coming out of that [Trump/Vance] campaign.”
Quite simply put, I don’t know how I should feel. The film itself was emotional and moving, but it also felt hollow at the same time. For these reasons, my rating for the 2020 film “Hillbilly Elegy” is a conflicted 5/10.