“The Holdovers”: The Most Heart-Warming Holiday Movie of the Past Years

A strong contender for the award season, and one of my personal favorites of 2023. Here’s why you shouldn’t miss The Holdovers.

Summary

Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) has been a classics professor at Barton’s Academy for many years. His grumpy and strict personality do not make him a favorite, neither with his fellow teachers nor with his students, who despise him for making the class nearly impossible to pass.

Hunham’s categorical refusal to change the grades of one of the richest students, whose father contributes economically to the institution, earns him the most annoying punishment possible: He must supervise the students who stay at school during the Christmas holidays.

Among this small group is Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), a smart but problematic student who is forced to stay due to her mother’s last-minute change of plans.

The only other adult staying at Barton is Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), who is mourning her son, a former school student who was killed in the Vietnam War.

These three characters, each with their own baggage, will have to work through their differences and learn to coexist under the same roof.

Time-Traveling Back To The 70s

If there is something that stands out in the first minutes of The Holdovers, it’s the commitment to make the film as period-accurate as possible. The team deserves to be praised, for they were in every detail.

Apart from the costume and production design, the director, Alexander Payne, tried to utilize filmmaking techniques from that time, that are perhaps uncommon in modern movies, such as crash zooms or long dissolves instead of hard-cut transitions.

The type of lens that was used, and the sound edition, were all choices based on that idea. Film emulsion and color grading were added to the footage during post-production, to give it a “vintage” look.

Retro-style title cards and logo variants for the studios involved were created to open the film, using a matching color palette and visual style, and adding film emulsion. For Universal Pictures (the international distributor), they could use the old logo, but Miramax and Focus Features didn’t exist back then, so those logos were especially made for The Holdovers.

Real Human Connection

It has been a while since I’ve come across a movie that focuses on the characters in the way The Holdovers does. In the midst of what 2023 has been for cinema, this is a much-needed breath of fresh air.

We’re introduced to three people who are already going through a rough time in their lives, and on top of that, they have to spend their holidays in a less than ideal situation.

At first, their forced coexistence is a nightmare, especially for teacher and student, who didn’t have the best relationship to begin with. But with the pass of days and a bit of Mary’s interference, the two of them begin to see each other differently.

Teacher and Student Bond

Behind his facade of an impertinent and troublemaker kid, Angus is struggling with a hard family situation. As we discover later on, Angus’ father is confined in a mental institution, and he’s not allowed to visit or stay in touch with him. His mother has remarried, and wants to rebuild her life with her new husband, but she has neglected her son in the process. That makes Mr. Hunham realize that most of his bad attitudes come from feeling abandoned, and fearing a future resembling his father’s.

Likewise, Angus finds out that an unfortunate incident in Hunham’s youth, prevented him from graduating from college. One of the rich students accused him of plagiarizing, even though it was him who was stealing Hunham’s work. The situation went south, and he was expelled. He got his job in Barton as a favor from the director, and not having other prospects, he stayed there, forever embittered and resentful.

The movie does a great job of showing the slow development in their relationship, from the mutual loathing of the beginning, to a place of understanding and complicity as the story moves forward.

I think we all remember at least one very strict teacher with whom we didn’t get along but ended up marking our education and, so, our lives. This becomes another point of connection for the audience.

Finding Hope After a Tragedy

For Mary, our third protagonist, spending Christmas without her son is heartbreaking. After losing her husband, Curtis became her entire world. He was everything a mother could want: intelligent, hard-working, and someone who wanted to get ahead in life. In fact, one of his objectives in joining the military, was that he would be able to pay for college.

While not in a very Christmasy mood, Mary creates a bridge between the other two by calling Hunham out when he’s being too tough with Angus, and encouraging him to make the boy’s holidays a bit happier.

This character’s story is about recovering your life after a tragedy, finding a way to go on, and being around people again. During the course of the film, Mary reconnects with her younger sister, who is pregnant, and begins to look forward to being part of her niece or nephew’s life, finding a new reason to be happy.

Of course, none of this could have been achieved without the incredible work of the cast, who gave moving performances. The three of them have received numerous awards and nominations for the film, and both Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph are currently nominated for the Academy Awards in the acting categories.

Just What Modern Cinema Needs

It’s hard to explain how happy The Holdovers made me. Not just for providing the kind of story I wanted to see, but for letting me know that there are still people out there who want to tell them. People who want to bring us personal and meaningful experiences and who make projects that transmit their love for their profession.

In a world where most of the entertainment we consume on a daily basis tastes mass-produced, I hope that more creatives follow Alexander Payne’s footsteps.