Andrew
“RICH HILL” My rating: A- (Opening Aug. 8 at the Screenland Crown Center)
91 minutes | No MPAA rating
Get out your hanky. After watching “Rich Hill” you’ll need it.
This Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning documentary from cousins Tracy Droz Tragos and Andrew Droz Palermo — centering on three adolescent boys coming of age in Rich Hill, MO (southeast of Kanas City in Bates County) — is a heartfelt and sobering study of poverty in America.
It’s about the sort of people the rest of the world looks upon with amusement and disdain, something that is acknowledged in the opening minute by 14-year-old Andrew, who declares “We’re not trash. We’re good people.”
And Andrew really is good people, a young man overflowing with hope and benign intentions despite a family situation — a mother this close to being institutionalized and a handyman father whose endless (and apparently hopeless) quest for employment means moving his clan several times every year — that would leave a lesser individual angry and impotent.
Instead Andrew is smart, well-spoken, and maintains a charitable disposition that is little short of miraculous. You feel that he might have a real chance at making something of himself.
The same cannot be said of the film’s other two subjects.
Butler's Cinema Scene 