Rating: R
Runtime: 2 hours, 13 minutes
Director: Alexander Payne
Quick Impressions:
Oh I loved this movie! I’ve been hearing for weeks that it’s “heart-warming” and “feel-good,” but I’m always a bit suspicious when those phrases are applied to films with Best Picture buzz. (I wonder, “Do you mean ‘heart-warming’ compared to Killers of the Flower Moon and Oppenheimer?”) But this movie genuinely is “heart-warming” and “feel-good.” (It’s especially cheering after Priscilla last week! I’m glad I saw that film, but I’m positive it’s responsible for my vague, tearful malaise for the next couple of nights. It wasn’t a bad film, but it left me with a bad feeling.)
The Holdovers gives us a beautiful story about real people being human with a visual aesthetic that reminds me of Sesame Street reruns when I was a toddler. (Apparently the movie was shot digitally and made to look like film in post-production, but the effect is the same.) Who wouldn’t feel good watching that?
I’d love to write something like this. I am toying with something with a similar tone (not a screenplay, but a novel). Last year I wrote two novels in one—part autobiographical reflection on my childhood and family, part psychological thriller murder mystery suspense comedy. Obviously that’s a lot to cram into one book (though writing it was therapeutic), so I ended up removing the autobiographical material. I’m now thrilled with the psychological thriller murder mystery suspense comedy (though I’m wondering exactly how when I tried to pare it down by removing the other half, I ended up reducing it from 100,000 to 120,000 words). But that other half, that darkly wholesome great American novel type thing has recently begun to take shape in my brain, too.
Meanwhile my non-fiction project is totally stressing me out. For me, fiction is the best medium for expressing truth. Non-fiction is limiting and too easily misunderstood. Also, for me, the mystery novel and the non-fiction book are about the same topic, so the novel is in some ways the truer (if less intentional) version. (My husband and daughter keep reassuring me no one else would see that. My husband says, “People do not read novels and assume they’re about the author.” But I just read a non-fiction story in The Devil and Sherlock Holmes by David Grann about a Polish professor who is convicted of murder based on a novel he’s written. That was not good for my paranoia. My daughter was like, “Mom, your novel does not make you seem like a sadistic, misogynistic psychopath, so I think you’re okay.”)
Honestly watching The Holdovers was welcomely epiphanic. (I don’t think any has ever said “welcomely epiphanic” but I’ll leave it in there in honor of Paul Giamatti’s awkward, pedantic professor of antiquity). I had this resonant feeling of, “Yes! These are real people. This is a film about human beings participating in life.”
I mention this too often, but the internet stresses me out. I love the community access it affords, but in general, being online is so bad for my mental health. For one thing, the internet is replete with articles telling me why I’m a horrible human being in bullet-pointed lists. (I don’t ask to see them. They show up in my social media feeds. And you know, a lot of those articles are produced by AI.) That stuff drives me crazy (literally). Watching The Holdovers, I realized, No here are the instructions for how to be a human being. These instructions contain truth, not just words. This is how humans convey meaning to one another—through art.
I find it much more edifying (and reassuring) to learn about being a human through the art humans make instead of paranoia-cultivating lists of superficial traits generated by artificial intelligence. I know this probably seems obvious—but then why is everybody on social media and nobody’s at the movie theater?
I’ve loved Alexander Payne movies before. Nebraska was a favorite of mine back in 2013. (I especially liked it because my four-year-old daughter found it so moving, too. She campaigned for it so hard that Oscar season—around our house, I mean. “At least that man got his truck,” she would say, “so at least he could get something.” Plus she had a crush on “that cute boy” (i.e. Will Forte!))
And I have a very special place in my heart for the movie Election. I just love that movie. (My family in Omaha had all kinds of fun stories about when it was filming there, too.)
On the other hand, I’ve never liked Sideways, which I find somewhat crushing (my inability to like it, that is, not the movie itself). Driving home from the theater, I said to my husband, “You know, maybe I was in the wrong stage of life for Sideways when I saw it.” (You never know with me. I’ll hate a movie for years, then wake up one day and realize, “You know, I kind of liked that.” I’ve sometimes come to love things I originally hated. It’s weird it never works the other way, but I’ve never yet grown to hate something I loved. Once you have my love, you keep it.) (By the time I’m dead, I’m going to like everything, I guess.)
At any rate, The Holdovers is a brilliant, beautiful film that also has this wonderfully mellow quality. It’s very easy to watch, and when you get to the end, you feel like you’ve seen something.
The Good:
From the trailer, I expected these characters to be way more prickly and unpleasant initially. I thought they would start out being not very likable at all and then change and grow and warm up to each other as time went on. They do change and grow and warm up to each other, but don’t be fooled by the trailer. They all start out extremely nice. I mean, they all have their issues, but they’re immediately sympathetic to the audience and not nearly as hostile to each other as I had expected.
The chemistry among the three stars is fantastic. They’re a great ensemble, and I hope they’re all nominated for Oscars. (I don’t know how realistic that is. There are so many potential contenders I still haven’t seen. Now that marching season is over, perhaps I can catch up.)
Dominic Sessa is the standout for me. He’s absolutely perfect in the part of Angus Tully. I’ve never heard of Sessa before, but his whole presence screams, “I’m the protagonist of a story set at a prep school.” He looks like he was born playing this role. He’s so comfortable and natural in it, and he has such a spark. I’d like to see him in another movie for reference. I don’t know how much the actor is like the character and vice-versa. Sessa is certainly believable in the part, though, with such screen presence.
I was also excited to see Da’Vine Joy Randolph as Mary Lamb. I remember liking her in Dolemite Is My Name. (We went all the way across town to see that at the one theater where it was playing because I just couldn’t bear to watch anything closer. And apparently I couldn’t wait like two weeks for it to be on Netflix. Without my mom here to watch the kids, being that whimsical feels too self-indulgent these days). Lamb’s character is immensely sympathetic, and Randolph makes her fun to watch as well. I particularly love her moments at the Christmas party. In fact, I liked Mary so much that my heart sank when I learned she wasn’t going to Boston. “Oh,” I fretted, “are we not going to see her again?”
I don’t think I’ve ever liked Paul Giamatti as much in anything as I like him in this. His character is so charming. There are physical challenges to the role, too. The character has a distinctive gait, and strabismus. I’m not sure if he’s wearing a prosthetic of some kind or if this is a digital effect added in post like the noise and film grain. Surely, Giamatti he can’t be looking in two different directions the entire time! (It’s wonderfully symbolic that the character is, of course, since this man has one foot in antiquity at all times. There’s a moment when he starts telling a story about mistletoe in The Aeneid that charmed my husband. He leaned over and whispered, “Look! It’s you!” But then later when Hunham starts giving a lecture about the historical St. Nicholas to Santa Claus, my husband added quickly, “Okay, that’s not you!”)
This is a simple, character-driven story, a slice of life. I love its lack of sensationalism, even though it does touch on heavy themes like grief, loss, loneliness, injustice, frustration, mental illness, and personal disappointment. The characters are so sympathetic, the story so moving that I kept losing myself in the world and forgetting to note how painstakingly 1970/71 has been recreated for us onscreen. Suddenly, in a bowling alley scene, I sat up and thought about how difficult reconstructing a certain era must be. I can’t fathom how much work must go into finding and assembling so many period props, fashions, cars. (It’s a nice touch that Mr. Hunham tells Angus we must understand the past and keeps telling stories about the past, when, in fact, he is himself in a story about the past.)
I liked the music in the movie, too. The score is unobtrusive.
Best Scene Visually:
There’s a sequence when Angus steals some keys and goes on a midnight spree through the isolated, forbidden areas of the school that filled me with such joy and glee.
Oh I want to go on adventures with him, I thought. In a moment when he’s eating ice cream, I leaned over and whispered to my husband, “This is what I would do.”
I love forbidden spaces, especially innocuous forbidden spaces. All year, my eight-year-old has been trying to educate me about the internet’s definition of liminal spaces. He and I are always hoping for shared interests, and in this case, I am quite interested in liminality, though I’ve always defined it a bit differently than the content that fascinates him on YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit. Also, I love creeping around empty spaces where I’m not supposed to be.
From time to time, I think of a stairwell behind the library where we weren’t supposed to go where I would hide and read. For the life of me, I can’t remember where this was, so maybe it was a dream, not a memory. I love the feeling it brings me. I can’t think of anything more appealing than Angus’s adventures all around the school.
“What is it you like about liminal spaces?” I asked my son just now.
“It’s the diversity,” he replied. But as he explained his answer, I saw that he’d chosen the wrong word. He meant the tension, the disconnect, the inherent paradox. “These are all places I know I should want to go that might be fun, but there’s something wrong this time,” he said.
When I was a child, I’d often pretend about getting locked in the mall (or, better, Disneyland!) overnight. And I think everybody else did, too, because now there’s all kinds of pop culture fiction about that.
This brief interlude where Angus wanders through the school is so liminal. Not only is he sneaking around through the darkened cafeteria, the empty hallways, but he’s also at a transitional time of life, on the cusp of adulthood, readjusting to a new family dynamic. Plus, the whole movie takes place in a liminal space—Christmas break when everybody is supposed to be at home with their families. And yet these people are still at school (where in most buildings, the heat is turned off, and they’ve sold back the Christmas tree.)
As I watched, I thought, “You know this movie has kind of a Harry Potter vibe. Sometimes Harry has to stay at school when everyone else gets to go—home for Christmas, to Hosgsmeade on a field trip. When that happens, Harry’s always sneaking around all over the place, too.” Obviously J.K. Rowling has a thing about people being in spaces where they don’t belong. That occupies a lot of mental real estate for her.
I like the further implication that the world is a space where these three don’t exactly belong. They’re sneaking around through life, but they don’t exactly fit in. (In fact, both Mary and Mr. Hunham have kind of sneaked into the school. I don’t want to give spoilers, but Hunham’s way of becoming a teacher at Barton made me wonder if screenwriter David Hemingson is a huge Harry Potter fan or something. I feel like I’ve heard this story before in The Chamber of Secrets. But maybe Rowling’s books just portray prep school culture with uncanny accuracy.)
Even the movies and TV the characters watch emphasize the theme of liminality. Little Big Man is a movie I only learned about and watched earlier this year, and since then, it keeps coming up all the time. I see it everywhere. But it tells the story of a man caught between two worlds who keeps drifting back and forth across thresholds. Similarly, the grandfather in the story expects to die, but he’s not quite sure when. He’s in a prolonged state of waiting to leave this world. And then, of course, Mary also enjoys watching The Newlywed Game. (I was so into the “all-new” reboot of that with Bob Eubanks when I was about six. It paired well with Jeopardy! in my mind. One was edifying, the other a guilty pleasure.) Mary likes to predict which couples will divorce (and, of course, honeymoons and divorces are other liminal periods). (I’ve just been asking myself, “Is this all a coincidence?” No, Sarah. The title of the movie is The Holdovers. (That’s so philosophical, too. They’re not just waiting out Christmas break. They’re living in a perpetual state of waiting to die.) (Well, the grief-stricken Mary is waiting to die when the break starts. Mr. Hunham is waiting to live.)
(Now I can’t stop thinking about an episode of The Newlywed Game I watched with my mom in reruns when I was in grad school. A husband was asked what kind of horse his mother-in-law would be. He answered, “A stallion.” My mom died at the absurdity and we waited eagerly for the catastrophe of his wife’s responses. We were sure these two would never make it as a couple. Then when asked the same question, his wife paused pensively and finally said, “I don’t know…a stallion?” We could not believe it. Then they were like, “Yayyyyy!” They celebrated so hard! It was hilarious—and also weirdly romantic. Your heart soars as you realize, “Oh these two were made for each other!” What a pair!)
Best Action Sequence:
I love the chase scene though the school that ends (disastrously) in the gym. I really like Angus. Part of me wants to hang out with him. (Then I think, No, that wouldn’t actually be enjoyable. He would always be breaking the fourth wall and narrating because truly, he does seem like the main character in a story about a young man at prep school.
But he’s fun, though. He’s still so young. He’s not truly trying to thwart Mr. Hunham. He’s trying to play with them (in that classic, “Come on, Dad, let’s throw the football around,” kind of way). I especially like his impish flip (or is it a cartwheel? Now I can’t remember!)
Best Scene:
Early on, there’s a moment when Mr. Hunham invokes the school’s former dean and his ideals, and we wonder if he’s a bit stodgy and insufferable, an ivory tower academic stuck in the past. Then later there’s this wonderful moment in the Christmas party when we listen to Mr. Hunham and realize, “Oh, you believe that! You want to help people because a good person helped you.” It made me tear up honestly. If I were in this guy’s class, I’d be like, “I’m a Barton man, sir!” and I’d always do all the Barton man things because he has such a kind heart. That’s exactly the way to make a Barton man out of me.
This is especially well done because the Christmas tree flashes brighter behind him as he’s speaking. I also like him a moment later when he begins to cry.
The Cherries Jubilee sequence, too, could hardly be more perfect. That’s a strangely satisfying ending to their Christmas misadventures.
The Negatives:
One truly tantalizing thing about this movie is that at every turn, we discover a character has done the wrong thing for some heart-warming reason. (It’s a vibe kind of like, “You think I’m a pyromaniac! But turns out, I only set that fire to save the orphanage!” Yes, but you’ve still got to quit setting fires.)
I like the way the movie makes me feel as I watch it, but I still get the sense I’m being manipulated. I don’t mind, but maybe I should. Others might. At every turn, these characters exhibit self-destructive or off-putting behavior, but it’s always for some really good reason. (Kind of like Severus Snape’s arc in those Harry Potter books!) I think too many of those superficial pop psychology articles my phone keeps pushing may have gotten to me. I see behavior like this and realize in dismay, “Oh, here are all the red flags having a red flag parade!” Plus that EIM training has me looking out for behavior that should be reported. (Like everything in this movie should be reported! Good thing these people aren’t trying to be elementary school catechists!) On the one hand, this film has an extremely Huckleberry Finnish moral sensibility (“All right then, I’ll go to hell!) And I mean, that’s fair. Society sucks. Society has failed these people. (Society has failed everyone!) Mr. Hunham and Mary can’t exactly tell Angus, “Follow the rules, and you’ll be as well rewarded as we’ve been!” But still…
I’m so alert to this because I’m hypercritical of my own behavior. I’m aware of my seeming penchant for dramatic flourishes. (The problem is, I always seem to have trouble communicating. From my point of view, I’m so often misunderstood that I always want to explain myself.) But there’s a new twist with Angus every ten seconds. And Mr. Hunham is like that, too. We’re always finding out, “I did this bad thing, but that’s because this horrible thing happened to me, and when you look at it that way, it’s quite heart-warming.” Part of me wants to say, “I’m sorry this horrible thing happened to you. But do better.” Everybody has a traumatic backstory of some sort. You can’t just go around stealing gaudy snow globes and taking them to insane asylums! Sometimes it doesn’t matter why you did the thing. You need to stop doing things like that.
Granted, human behavior is messy. Humans are imperfect. That’s what I like about this film. It’s like a kinder, gentler As Good as It Gets. And I do think the end of the movie raises the stakes and challenges, “Okay, now you have to behave better, don’t you?” But I don’t know. I’m so aware of my own limitations and character flaws. I struggle with giving Angus unlimited permission to screw up. It feels like wish fulfillment because that’s what I want to see. That’s a reassuring message—people are imperfect, and grand gestures transform all bad behavior into tender moments. (But is that true?) (Doesn’t Angus need to lay off the hijinks a little bit?) I don’t know. This movie makes me feel too good about not being good. I don’t trust it.
Maybe I’m not making this point clearly. I love to hear the message, “It’s okay to mess up. It’s okay you’re imperfect.” (In fact, it’s more satisfying, more human, and flat out more fun to hang out with people who are imperfect.) But I don’t want to give myself an excuse to (inadvertently) hurt other people because I’m in the middle of making a grand gesture or having a mental breakdown. Angus is all drama all the time, and every time he reveals something, there’s some other complication he’s still concealing. I love the ending of the film, but the action Mr. Hunham takes (on some level) feels manipulative and theatrical, too. It puts such a burden on Angus. I don’t know. I’m still digesting it.
I’m not sure that what I’m describing is a weakness of the film. (It seems infantile to say, “The biggest problem with this movie is that I liked it too much.” Do I want a movie to make me unhappy?)
I also noticed less (overt) racism than I would have expected for 1970, but I wasn’t alive at that time, so what do I know?
Truthfully, I don’t see much wrong with this movie. It’s definitely one of my top films of the year. It’s up there with Oppenheimer, Barbie, and Killers of the Flower Moon. We also showed my daughter Asteroid City the other night. (“I never had children. Sometimes I wonder if I wish I should’ve.” That’s my favorite line!) I’d forgotten how much I like Asteroid City, particularly the way there are so many frame stories, and how the narrative progresses by continuously shifting around among all of them.
I’ve always been a fan of narrative advancement through the juxtaposition of thematically related scenes. (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs works that way. That’s why you’ve got to watch the whole thing.) I wanted the novel I wrote last fall to work that way. I wanted the character’s interiority explored through juxtaposed scenes from various periods of her life, and then the (outward facing) plot continuously advancing in a compressed time frame. That way we solve the mystery of what’s going on with the protagonist, and once she’s able to solve it, too, she can think more clearly to solve the present-day mystery unfolding around her. But my friend was like, “No, this book is about everything. It’s at least two books. You can’t put so many books all in the same book!” I’m happy with what I’ve done with the mystery plot, but I still think the arrangement of thematically related scenes results in a kind of narrative that can be so powerful in the end when it all comes together. (After a book’s worth of juxtaposed scenes, you should get the idea without having it spelled out for you!)
But The Holdovers is a traditionally told story that just happens to be presented very clearly and very well. We have a fantastic cast working with better-than-average material. So even though the story isn’t wildly innovative, it feels so emotionally true and (for that reason) satisfying.
Overall:
If you’re looking for an Oscar caliber movie this holiday season that won’t make you feel vaguely terrible in some way, The Holdovers is the movie for you. I’m already excited to watch it again when possible. I know my daughter would love it!