To look at the 13-year-old Appachey is to think the worst about him. He’s a sullen, pudgy kid with an attitude toward his mom and perhaps a vendetta toward life as he aimlessly breaks ice in an abandoned lot. Even his name, a misspelled pronunciation of a Native American tribe, just makes you wonder about this kid and his family. When we first meet him in the documentary “Rich Hill,” we see him light a cigarette in an oddly placed toaster in the middle of his house’s foyer. Then he explains how his father walked out on him when he was 6 and never came back.
“We’re not trash,” says Andrew, another boy from the small town of Rich Hill, Missouri. “We’re good people.” They’re good people, but they don’t have good lives, and it affects them in ways that can make it hard to find the good in them. In the documentary “Rich Hill” by Andrew Droz Palermo and Tracy Droz Tragos, the idyllic, romantic view of Real America is replaced by a tough community and lifestyle where the three kids at its center grow up quick. It’s a highly perceptive and observant, albeit dreary look at adolescence in the Midwest.
Rich Hill, MO is a rural town near the border of Kansas. A sign informs that the population is just 1,396. They have bake sales, 4th of July celebrations, and a high school football team, but there’s really nothing here for these kids. Continue reading “Rich Hill”