The Holdovers: a Warm Hug in an Itchy Christmas Jumper
Director Alexander Payne has always loved exploring the quirks of human relationships. His latest film is his most meaningful and touching yet.
good.film
a year ago
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Why should I see The Holdovers?
An “old school” movie in the best possible way, what begins as a simple story peels back layer after relatable layer of fully realised characters you’ll grow to truly care about.
There’s a gently hilarious thread that runs through the work of American filmmaker Alexander Payne: his flawed, frazzled leading men often deal with a physical oddity. In Election, Matthew Broderick is stung on the eyelid by a bee. In Downsizing, Matt Damon is shrunk to just 5 inches tall. And now, in The Holdovers, Paul Giamatti has [drumroll]... a glass eye and smells like fish. Tough to see Brad Pitt signing up for that one.
So what’s with the quirks? In a glowing roundup of his filmography, Commonweal Magazine describes Payne as “America’s poet laureate of losers” and his characters as “a menagerie of the bumbling, the henpecked, the ineffectual, the distressed, and the depressed.”
It’s true that Payne’s made a career out of heroing the anti-hero – but not for empty LOLs or cruel comparisons. To him, the least fortunate are where the most interesting stories can be told. And his latest – about acknowledging the acceptance and love we all need, and finding it within a makeshift family, when your own is out of reach – is one of his best.
What is the movie The Holdovers about?
The Holdovers explores social causes like Family & Community, Mental Health & Inequality.
Pop on your mittens. It’s December 1970 at Barton Academy, a well-off boarding school in New England, Massachusetts, and students are bracing the frigid snowdrifts to head home for the holidays - all except five of them. Hey, some parents are just brutal like that.
Drawing the short straw to oversee “the holdover” students is Paul Hunham (played by Paul Giamatti), a history professor whose sharp tongue, sky-high standards and brutal red pen have him rusted on as the school grump by students and colleagues alike. Side note here: who better to play this guy than Paul “Sideways” Giamatti? Every last one of his withering put-downs is a comic delight and a masterclass in delivery!
Fair to say Hunham doesn’t have many heartwarming carols and hot cocoa nights planned. He expects his “lazy, vulgar, rancid little Philistines” to keep hitting the books over Christmas, including his best student Angus Tully (newcomer and Critics’ Choice Award-winner Dominic Sessa) who’s clearly bright, but belligerent. He’s stuck at Barton after his remarried Mum cancels their fancy St. Kitts vacay, choosing a honeymoon trip for two instead. Ouch.
The twist? After six days, the wealthiest kid’s Dad lands a helicopter on the school grounds and whisks his son and his mates off for a ski trip – as long as they have their parents’ permission, of course. It’s the first example of an economic ‘haves vs. have-nots’ thread that will become pivotal to the story… and guess whose parents couldn’t be reached?
Is The Holdovers a comedy or a drama?
Like almost all of his work, we’d describe Payne’s latest as a comic drama: a wonderful mix of wit, pathos and emotion. If you’re a fan, the opening half hour of The Holdovers is like sinking into a warm bath. It’s just comforting to watch Payne and his rubbery Sideways star Giamatti reunite, with his acerbic Prof. Hunham barking a veritable thesaurus of acid-tongued retorts (credited to Whiskey Cavalier TV writer David Hemingson, who’s well in the frame for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar this year).
Teddy Kountze: Sir, I don't understand.
Paul Hunham: That's glaringly apparent.
Teddy Kountze: I can't fail this class!
Paul Hunham: Oh, don't sell yourself short, Mr. Kountze, I truly believe that you can!
Delicious. As brought to life by Giamatti, Paul Hunham is vividly set in his ways. He takes no fools, and ignores the eye rolls as he spouts his favourite lines of poetry and historical tidbits, from the archaeology of the Phoenicians at Carthage to stories of Romans “bathing naked in the freezing Tiber”. Basically, a pompous ass – but Giamatti makes sure we can sense the soul within, and the pain he’s covering up with all his academic bluster.
How does The Holdovers explore isolation and otherness?
The Holdovers tells its story gradually, slowly drawing its three main characters together to unlock their pasts: Prof. Hunham, student Tully, and the melancholy head cook Mary Lamb (breakout star Da'Vine Joy Randolph), who’s still grappling with the loss of her 19-year-old son, killed while serving in Vietnam the year before.
As the three bunk down for the Christmas break in the empty school, every clash and conflict is a clue to the feelings of pain and isolation that lurk underneath each of their facades. The fact that they’re alone, together – each unloved or abandoned by their families, either literally or figuratively – creates a common bond, whether they’re ready to acknowledge it or not.
Mary soon opens up to Paul, sharing how deeply she mourns her son, and Paul’s empathetic listening shows us the first signs of the real man behind the eyes - one usually condescending, the other prosthetically wonky. Yet even here, there’s still space for a gentle, and very relatable, seam of humour to poke through:
[remembering Mary's son]
Paul Hunham: He was a great kid. I had him one semester. Very insightful.
Mary Lamb: Mm-hmm. He hated you. He said you were a real asshole.
Paul Hunham: Well, uh, like I said... sharp kid. Insightful.
But the core relationship that cracks Hunham out of his crusty oyster shell is with Angus Tully. As played by first-timer Dominic Sessa, he’s the beating heart of The Holdovers, and doesn’t hold back in spraying Hunham with his real thoughts, which are usually negative. But, besides the usual 18-year-old stuff, what’s behind his angst and rebellion?
MILD SPOILERS BELOW: skip past the photo below if you still haven’t seen The Holdovers!
It’s easy to chalk Tully’s mood up to FOMO: he’s embittered by his Mum’s decision to take off with a new man and leave him behind. But his story deepens, first when he blurts out that his father died, then when Hunham learns that Tully’s been prescribed librium for depression. Remember, it’s 1970: according to the US National Library of Medicine, antidepressants “were rarely prescribed in general medical practice but usually were reserved for the most seriously ill patients.” But it’s a key bonding point for Hunham: he’s taking the same medication himself.
Before you realise it, Hunham and Tully have formed a proxy father & son relationship. That might sound a bit lame, but it’s perfectly earned - and it unlocks a further revelation from Angus about his real father. He’s not in a graveyard, but an institute: suffering from the dementia that prompted his mother to file for divorce. One of the film’s more affecting moments comes as Angus admits to Hunham that he can see his mother’s logic: “It's easy to just stash me away in boarding school. And I get it. She never has to look at me. Because maybe when she looks at me... she sees him.”
That prompts Hunham to open up about his own father, a level of intimacy he wouldn’t have dreamed of sharing a week before. And suddenly, Hunham’s pathway from open disdain to newfound respect - even affection - is mapped out. Angry, disaffected, abandoned: the student and teacher are more similar than different (okay, not counting trimethylaminuria, the rare genetic condition that Hunham wearily explains as the reason he literally smells like fish). As Paul admits to Angus in a private moment: “I find the world a bitter and complicated place, and it seems to feel the same way about me. I think you and I have this in common.”
What does The Holdovers have to say about class and wealth?
It’s immediately clear that Barton is a school for the privileged - if the wood panelled halls and “Est. 1797” didn’t give it away, then the literal helicopter parents flying in to scoop up their offspring certainly rams it home. Thematically, Payne and Hemingson then deftly keep the money tap running in ways that are surprisingly relevant to audiences today, where only 9% of US kids whose parents are in the bottom income quartile will earn a bachelor’s degree.
The spectre of Vietnam hangs over the film, and the threat it poses to young men around Tully’s age… assuming their parents aren’t senators or CEOs. He’s super aware he’s on academic thin ice, where flunking out means military school, and a fast-track to war. “I can't keep it together. I lie. I steal. I piss people off. I'll probably get kicked out of Barton too. And when I do, it'll be my own fault. Get sent to Fork Union and maybe to you-know-where. And nobody will care.”
Compare that to Mary’s son: a gifted student like Angus, but his widowed mother didn’t stand a hope of saving enough for a college education. “Even with Student Support, it wasn’t even close to enough”. His answer? Enlist to fight in Vietnam, then go to college on a GI Bill when he returned… except he didn’t return. The irony isn’t lost on us that Mary’s son may have been killed in a helicopter while his fellow classmates flew to school in one. As Hunham gripes, in a sentence that could apply to any decade between 1970 and today: “The world doesn't make sense anymore. I mean, it’s on fire. The rich don't give a shit. Poor kids are cannon fodder.”
What are critics saying about The Holdovers?
“The Holdovers is a story about the absence of family… as it watches three individuals come together and apart, it’s subtly attuned to the way class constricts people’s lives.”
- Mark Hanson, Slant Magazine
“It’s a lighthearted film on the surface, but themes of grief, loss, and the fear of mortality for boys who know they might be drafted at any moment run beneath the beat of the plot.”
- Alissa Wilkinson, Vox
“The Holdovers is a brilliant study of an all-boys school and the troubled men it produces.”
- Annie Berke, The New Republic
Fully on board, or disagree big time? We’d love to hear your take. Leave a review to share your thoughts with the good.film community!
So what’s the takeaway from The Holdovers?
Alexander Payne has proven again that he’s the master of taking flawed, prickly personalities and making them sing. With minimal cinematic trickery (no mega CGI budgets here), Payne patiently chips away at these characters’ foibles until the heart that always lay underneath is exposed for us to enjoy. Each of them needed a form of love and belonging… and each find it, briefly, in this most unlikely but supportive of threesomes. It’s classic, rock-solid filmmaking.
The Holdovers is the kind of film that, when the lights come up, leaves you blinking in surprise that you’re back in your body. You could’ve sworn you were in a snowed-in boarding school in 1970, furious at your Mum and wishing for your own private helicopter – until you realise that in terms of personal growth, it’s the wealthy kids that have missed out.
By staying at Barton and exposing their vulnerable sides, Paul, Angus and Mary have made connections with real meaning that they’ll carry for life. And as for you? You’ll float out of the cinema, then continue pondering things like Paul’s next chapter, Mary’s son’s sacrifice, and Angus’s institutionalised Dad on the drive home (and long after).
Sure, as a seasonal treat, it doesn’t have the hijinks of Home Alone, say, or the romance of Love Actually. But this is a different kind of cockle-warmer. With its authentic spirit, a clever screenplay full of wry laughs and a redemption story that feels genuinely earned, we reckon The Holdovers is destined to become a film buff’s future favourite… and not just at Christmas.
