With its small circle of contrasting characters and tight-knit holiday setting, The Holdovers serves up laughter, wit, and a reminder of how little we sometimes know about the people around us
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Christmas cookies, carols and hymns, snow that blankets the frozen ground; a warm drink next to the fireplace while catching up with the most important people in our lives. Is there a better, happier, more meaningful time than the holidays? Christmas, as Andy Williams so famously sang, is the most wonderful time of the year.
Unless, that is, you’re forced to spend it at a New England boarding school with a particularly frigid teacher of ancient history—one who derives nearly as much pleasure from failing students as he does from citing his beloved Greek and Roman orators. For a handful of students, some with their own glaring flaws, that is their holiday fate: stuck inside Barton Academy while their fellow cohorts have fun with family and friends.
Directed by Alexander Payne, The Holdovers is a snowy, close-quartered drama whose central characters regularly hurl insults at one another, often with considerable venom. Gradually, however, they come to partake in many earnest conversations, including ones that reveal the out-of-sight details of their lives and closely kept secrets. By the end of the film, each of them has learned something fundamentally new about themselves, thanks in part to learning something new about their interlocutors. “Not for ourselves alone are we born,” says Paul in an early scene, quoting Cicero.
David Hemingson wrote the story and script, which is set at the very end of 1970. NASA has succeeded in putting three Americans on the moon, but in Vietnam, thousands of young Americans have perished, including the son of one of the story’s main characters. This will be her first Christmas without her only child.
The film opens on a half-day of school, with Barton students eager to flee campus. Inside the class of Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) that moment feels like eternity. Final exams have been passed back—mainly a mix of C’s, D’s, and F’s—and despite the impending holiday break, he’s about to begin new material. One of the many disgruntled students we meet is the gangly and dark-haired Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa). He pipes up in protest, which ultimately backfires. But hey, he still has his holiday vacation in St. Kitts to look forward to.
Or not. As his mother rather coldly explains over the phone, she and Angus’ wealthy stepfather have decided at the last minute to go on their postponed honeymoon. St. Kitts is a no-go. Angus, along with a few other “holdovers,” is forced to spend the holiday break with Paul Hunham. One might note that his last name looks and sounds similar to “human” yet nonetheless has a clunky, unbalanced feel to it. Paul might masterfully sing out the aphorisms of figures like Cicero, but living up to those moral precepts often seems beyond his reach.
The students’ first week is miserable. Before long, however, the wealthy father of the school’s quarterback decides he’ll pick his son up after all. (There had been a dispute about whether the latter would cut his long hair. Asked by a fellow student why he doesn’t just cut it, he replies, “Civil disobedience, man.”) The quarterback invites the other students to go on the family ski trip, and off they go—everyone except Angus, whose mother was unable to be reached over the phone to get permission. That leaves Angus stuck with Paul, and Paul stuck with Angus.
The two of them are not entirely alone. Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), the school’s head cook, is also staying at Barton over the holidays. It’s the last place she was with her son, she tells Paul one night as they casually watch The Newlywed Game over Jim Beam. We find out that she’s not only lost her son, but years earlier she lost her fiancé. Death has profoundly shaped her life, and the scenes in which grief overwhelms her make for some particularly powerful moments.
While we know early on of Mary’s source of pain, the inner turmoils of Paul and Angus reveal themselves more gradually. Through shouting matches, cheeseburgers, a trip to the hospital, and an excursion to Boston, they slowly—and in piecemeal fashion—began to better understand each other. Each of them has a complicated and unresolved history, but as Paul says to his much younger companion (albeit it in a slightly cliched way), “[Y]our history does not have to dictate your destiny.”
That’s the good news. But it doesn’t mean shaping the future is easy. Perspective, though, can go a long way in bringing greater clarity to our lives. Early in the film, an obnoxious and spoiled student makes an offhand remark about Mary’s dejected demeanor. Paul, a character who we’ve only seen thus far as cold and condescending, can’t help but shout, “You have no idea what that woman has been through!”
There’s quite a few scenes of this nature, some more direct than others. But the theme seems clear enough: Each of us is confronted with different shades and hues of pain and loss, and each of us deals with them in particular ways. We can, and should, make an effort to better understand our own lives by better understanding the lives of others.
At 133 minutes, The Holdovers feels slightly too long, but we spend those minutes with genuinely interesting characters and the fine actors who play them. While there’s little to envy about being physically and emotionally stranded over the holidays, there’s something oddly satisfying about watching these forlorn characters interact with one another. It’s a pleasure to watch, whatever time of the year it may be.
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