A Turkey and Some Ham
Netflix delivers the dishes as the holiday season begins
The past week has seen the release of two highly-anticipated politically-infused features — albeit in a continued period of a plague, Washington turmoil, and a creative drought. Sure, we can’t (and shouldn’t) pack the theaters, but Netflix has brought some light into the void that has been the film industry. What is typically my favorite period of the year looks different, but nevertheless I welcome the floodgates of Oscar-bait. The show must go on.
Hillbilly Elegy
The biggest Turkey served on Thanksgiving was the Ron Howard-helmed Vanessa Taylor adaptation of J.D. Vance’s 2016 bestselling memoir. Also, it was the film I was the most excited to see, coming from my interest in the book.
Vance’s autobiography details his upbringing between Ohio and rural Kentucky in a low-income family. With a drug-addicted mother who flies off the handle at even a questionable glance and a smart-mouthed, chain-smoking grandmother who seems to offer the only ounce of care in his success, the young man has a lot to endure.
“Oh God”, I thought “this can either go extremely well or quickly wrong.”
Well, I was right, but not in the way I had hoped.
Hillbilly Elegy the movie is a heartless caricature. It is everything that the paid critics that were born and raised in L.A. or New York (far away from the south) said it would be.
What was published as an American Dream success story became a foggy pity party on film. It seems that Vanessa Taylor, the picture’s screenwriter known for her Oscar-nominated collaboration with Guillermo del Toro on 2017’s Best Picture Winner The Shape of Water, took no interest in Vance’s triumphs and more in the weirdness of his life’s darker moments. The film is told out of chronological order and attempts to put the pieces together of a tumultuous youth. It fails, however, to find a through-line. I found it to be a hodgepodge of bitter fights, child abuse, and woe. Any inkling of political under or overtone vanished.
The film was crafted with an A-List cast and crew. Amy Adams and Glenn Close’s star power, however, couldn’t save it. I blame the screenwriter for Adams’ performance as Vance’s drug-addicted mother; the actress seemed to be detached from what little character she had to play. I sadly can’t recall a genuine moment where she was on screen as a mother instead of “Amy Adams”. I will laud Adams for recently defending her part in the film, though, as she is an actress with enormous range who takes pride in each of her roles. Good for her, but I still wasn’t convinced.
Glenn Close, to her credit, does bring some heft to her role as Mamaw Blanchard. She is only soul who comes close to saving the film, serving as a mediator between the chaos of little J.D.’s home life and the comfort of the outside world. It is an emotional performance that challenges the actress to act internally, as opposed to Adams’ outlandish and largely physical feats. Where there is no heart elsewhere, you can rely on Mamaw to bring it. Plus, she’s a complicated character. We are given her history and the outer elements that shaped her life.
If you want to watch Hillbilly Elegy, I’d look forward to Close’s scenes. Other than that, I’ll just say good luck. It does a disservice to Vance’s life and book and leaves a bruise on the impoverished in Hill Country.
Mank
In David Fincher’s Mank, Gary Oldman serves us our second course: some serious ham.
Like the previous film, Mank attempts once again to reconstruct a period of events with flashbacks. This time, it is Hollywood screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz writing his masterpiece Citizen Kane. Mankiewicz, or Mank as his friends call him, is an alcoholic with an otherwise storied little career of plays, scripts, and rewrites. A charmer if there ever were, he’s also racked up quite a bit of intimidating friends and co-workers. Among them are M-G-M studio head Louis B. Mayer and newspaper publisher and California GOP chairman William Randolph Hearst. These are two of the most powerful people not only in Hollywood, but the entire state.
Mayer and Hearst seize the power of the motion picture medium in an effort to score a win for Republican candidate Frank Merriam in California’s gubernatorial race. As the studio creates propaganda pieces slandering Merriam’s opponent, Democrat Upton Sinclair, Mank spectates with guilt and content. Thus, upon meeting radical newcomer to the film world Orson Welles, Mank develops the story of “Charles Foster Kane”, a media mogul whose life practically parallels that of Hearst.
What are the risks of sticking it to the man? Mank knows all too well, and fights to make his “finest work” come to fruition, no matter what cost.
I implore all SAG Awards voters to keep Gary Oldman on your radar this year for this performance. Oldman, in the same vein as his equally hammy Churchill performance in Darkest Hour from two years ago, exhumes the body of one of cinema’s greatest underdogs in a performance that is breathtakingly smart and unbound.
And, of course, leave it to David Fincher to bring in the eerie tone with his direction. Shot in black-and-white, it is polished with 1940’s silky, smoky glamor. It feels like a quantum leap, as every physical and dramatic element emerges like something out of a “Golden Age” film drama.
The script was written by the director’s father, Jack Fincher, who passed away in 2003. Nearly twenty-five years after Mank was first drafted, we finally have a product to honor not only the genius and determination of Herman Mankiewicz, but the wit and respect of Fincher. In my mind, it honors both. This is a film made for movie-lovers by movie lovers, each fade breathing with nostalgia.
If you know Citizen Kane, you will eat up every second of Mank. If not, I still encourage a viewing. If you aren’t lost in the film-lingo, you’ll respect the protagonist’s journey and devotion to justice. Ironically, Mank, a film focused entirely on wealthy creatives, does a better job of sticking up for the little guy than Hillbilly Elegy.
