American Hollow

Absolutely one of the best films this year. Compelling, well-shot doc about a big family living in a Kentucky ravine. The film shows wife abuse in such a sad way that it strikes the heart. But it also shows the pride of living off the land, particularly through the work of an elderly woman. Tragic and incredible.

As someone who grew up in the deep south, and had to leave it as an adult for the purpose of economic survival and the avoidance of poverty, I can deeply relate to this family.

The interesting thing about them is that they complain about their impoverished condition, yet when the 18 year-old boy want to move to Ohio to pursue a better life, the family sabotages his efforts with discouraging words such as "a bad check always returns."

Having come from such a family that also tried to sabotage my efforts to gain self-respect through work and better economic opportunities, this all rang true for me. Especially coming from a southern culture where ties to the land are strong and very few people actually summon up the guts to move to "the big city," where the inevitable hardships and culture shock await.

A very accurate and moving portrait of a southern family, obviously one which cares about each other, but one which seems to wallow in it's own dysfunction and lack of ambition. I kept wanting to say to them, but you could have a better life, if only you'd get up off your caboose and go out into the big, bad world and show some gumption and make something of yourself. That kind of attitude seems to be common in families which have grown up in a rural environment. I know, because I met many people like that in Arkansas, where I was raised.

I lived in Pound Virginia for 4 years, and was married to a coal miners daughter for twenty years. I found the scenes in this Documentary to be not only an accurate reflection of the people I met there, but also typical of the people I met there. I was not raised there so as an outsider to the culture there perhaps my opinion is more unbiased. My wife was actually related to the Bowling family. There are a lot of them up there. I honor the people of the Appalacian. They are a culture unto themselves. There is nothing like them anywhere in the USA, or the world for that matter. You must live there to experience what I'm talking about. They are hard working, honest sensitive people with a strong family ethic, but with very few options. I also saw a lot of the family dysfunction depicted in the documentary caused by the extreme poverty there. I was fortunate to live there during the short burst of prosperity brought on by the first energy crisis in the late 70's, but the preceding years of poverty were still evident. Now with the energy crisis over, and technology taking over the coal mines things are worse there than ever.

If Rory Kennedy meant her documentary, "American Hollow," to show us a poor Southern rural white family as something more respectable than the disparaging hillbilly stereotype, she failed.

Not only were those familiar stereotypes not dispelled in this film, they were played out before us.

The film offers us snaggletoothed, alcoholic louts given to ridiculing their wives and kids. We see amazingly good-humored, unprotesting womenfolk who do all the work of keeping the family together and fed, with little help from the men.

The chronically unemployed men in the Bowling family simply won't leave to find work and a better life outside the hollow in their part of Kentucky where there are few job prospects.

Worse, they actively encourage failure in the "young'uns" as well.

I suspect we're supposed to believe that the Bowlings are nevertheless noble because they have deep roots on the land they've been unemployed, impoverished, and uneducated on for generations.

My grandparents came across the Atlantic to America because they couldn't make a living in the old country. I think that's far more courageous (and American) than staying in a lousy situation with no hope.

Poor rural black folks have to contend with racial discrimination when they go to the city for job opportunities. By contrast, the Bowling men, most of them blond, wouldn't have that hurdle to jump. But no, they stay resolutely mired in their hollow.

I'm a pretty soft-hearted person, but I lost my respect for the Bowling men in the first ten minutes of the film.

However, even if most of the subjects of this documentary aren't appealing, the film itself is well-made. I did learn one thing from "American Hollow" -- that love-sick teenage boys and the sweet young things who lead them on are the same the world over.

This movie shows the poor, underprivileged, yet close-knit and seemingly happy family that lives in Appalachia. There's another side to the movie that most people don't see. All throughout the movie almost every family is living primarily off of welfare....they get their medicine through welfare. Instead of getting up off of their butts and doing something (aside from the few that "collect moss from the woods and sell it to pet stores"), they are sitting around not doing a thing, and are draining the economy's tax money. Your money. This movie depicts the negative side of Welfare. Welfare was created to benefit those who worked hard but cannot sustain enough to properly keep their family business, etc. in good health. But this shows how welfare has negative effects as well: it encourages some to be lazy and solely live off of the countries welfare instead of trying to hold steady jobs.