“The Holdovers”
4/5 ****
“The Holdovers,” directed by Alexander Payne, is a 2023 holiday comedy-drama. The story follows Paul Hanhum (Paul Giamatti), a cranky history teacher at an all-boys boarding school; Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), a troubled student; and Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), the school’s head chef who just lost her son, Curtis, in Vietnam. The three of them are stuck holding over at the school for the winter break. Over the course of the two weeks, the three begin to grow close and understand one another, as well as learn to care for themselves.
To start off, the film’s aesthetic screams the early 1970s. The story takes place in December 1970 and Payne made his film feel like it came out in 1970 as well. The studio logos in the beginning were either the logos used at the time or designed around how studio logos looked in 1970. Not only that, but the picture itself has a graininess that makes the film look like it was shot and projected on actual film. It was in fact shot digitally, but the way the picture was played around gives the overall film a vintage quality that adds a coziness to it.
The film’s core is Paul and Angus learning more about one another and understanding why they are the way they are. At the beginning, Paul just seems like an old-school grouch who does not care about his students and just wants to watch them fail, and that is partially true. At first, he has the mindset that all the students at Barton are a bunch of rich stuck-up pricks who have had it easy their entire lives. However, as he grows closer to Angus, he realizes that is not true; everyone has their struggles.
When we first meet Angus, he seems to be a rich prick like most of the other students. He’s smug, he’s antagonistic and he would not stop bragging about how he is going to St. Kitts for the holidays. However, the audience begins to get a hint as to why Angus is the way he is when his mother calls at the last minute to tell him to stay at school so she and her new husband can go on their honeymoon. When all the other boys holding over leave school to join in on a ski trip, Angus’s mother is the only one who does not pick up the phone to give him permission to tag along. After that, the audience begins to realize that Angus’s mother does not care for her son and is totally alright with leaving him at boarding school over the winter holiday.
The real gut punch, however, is when Paul agrees to take Angus to Boston on a “field trip.” Only then does he truly understand Angus. When Paul catches Angus trying to sneak off in a cab, Angus admits that he was going to see his dad, whom he said was dead. Both Paul and the audience soon realize, however, that Angus’s dad is alive, but in a sanatorium due to mental illness. Paul finally sees Angus for who he really is: a good kid who acts out and seeks attention because he feels abandoned by his mother and misses his father.
Paul not only changes his attitude about Angus, but he also changes his attitude about himself. Angus learns that Paul is so cranky because he was never able to leave Barton. Paul himself was a Barton alum who went to Harvard and had a promising future, until his roommate framed him for plagiarism and got him kicked out of school. The only job Paul was able to get was a teaching job at Barton, his old high school. Although Paul claims that he loves his job and Barton, he realizes that he was never able to live his life and do all that he dreamed of doing.
Despite Angus’s and Paul’s development being the center of the film, Mary is the glue that holds the film together. While her arc is not as front and center as the other two, it is definitely the most emotional. Mary begins the film grieving her son but somewhat doing alright. She’s focused on doing her job and moving on. However, when they all go to a Christmas Eve party, the loss of her son hits her extremely hard. While she knows that Curtis is gone, the emotional pain and loss and emptiness of his absence hits her all at once and she breaks down. By the end, however, she grows to come to better terms with the fact that Curtis has passed, gifting his baby things to her pregnant sister.
Mary, despite not liking the students of Barton either, chastises Paul for how he treats Angus. She first makes Paul understand that despite all of Angus’s antics, he is still a kid who was abandoned by his mother over the holidays.
Overall, “The Holdovers” is an extremely emotional film with many funny moments. It really reflects real life, and the characters are so well written and complex that they feel like real people. The way each person acts makes sense within the contexts of their lives and each character’s relationship with one another is so beautiful. I guess what I’m trying to say is that this film is very human.