Southern DISCOMFORT

A SENSITIVE APPALACHIAN FAMILY MEMOIR. THE BAROMETER OF A DIVIDED NATION. OR JUST OSCAR BAIT? RON HOWARD’S HILLBILLY ELEGY WILL SURELY SPLIT OPINION. TOTAL FILM MEETS THE DIRECTOR AND CAST TO UNPACK THE SEASON’S MOST INSPIRATIONAL TRUE STORY.

- JAMES MOTTRAM

Sorry, early interview… I don’t have soundbites down yet,” apologizes Ron Howard, as he freestyles an involved answer about his new movie Hillbilly Elegy. It’s understandable. This adaptation of J.D. Vance’s best-selling memoir about his life growing up in Appalachia is not the sort of movie that can be boiled down to bite-size throwaways. A complex family saga about addiction, adversity, and ambition, its arrival during US election month makes it timely to say the least.

When Vance’s book was published four years ago, many took it as a window into the disaffected white working-class who swept Donald Trump to power. “Anyone wanting to understand Trump’s rise or American inequality should read it,” said one commentator. Certainly, the Republican-supporting Vance is the epitome of the American Dream: after a hardscrabble upbringing in Ohio, he was accepted into Yale and, later, a Silicon Valley biotech firm.

Vance was initially “reluctant” to let his family memoir be turned into a movie, says Howard. “He said that several companies had reached out to him. But he wasn’t sure. And I told him I wasn’t sure either.” Still, the 66-year-old director was in need of something that felt personal. “I’d been looking for a story that was contemporary, and dealt with rural, small-town America in a way that I could relate to and yet wasn’t sensationalised, wasn’t a crime story.”