The Holdovers

Alexander Payne's latest film, The Holdovers, is just as good as you've heard. The film takes place in December and January 1970-71 at the Barton Academy--a boarding school for boys located in chilly New England. Honestly, that's just catnip for me right there. I love a good boarding school movie. Especially a boy's boarding school and especially in New England. Give me Dead Poets Society or give me death!

Paul Giamatti plays Paul Hunham, a professors of classics (Ancient Greek and Roman shit) and the most curmudgeonly man who ever curmudgeoned. If you look up "curmudgeon" in the dictionary, Paul Hunham's picture is next to the definition. This man is cranky. This man is pedantic. This man is no-nonsense. This man is condescending. This man has a lazy eye, so the students call him "Walleye". 

Might this man also have a secret heart of gold underneath his gruff and cranky exterior? Might the reason this man is SOOO curmudgeonly have something to do with his own history of being treated as "less than" by others? I think you know the answer to that!

Paul is tapped to stay on campus over Christmas break to essentially babysit the "holdovers"--the group of students who, for various reasons, are not going home for Christmas. This includes Angus Tully (brand new to the screen and already a star, Dominic Sessa, truly a revelation in this role), a rich, smart, arrogant kid who was originally scheduled to go on a luxury vacation to Saint Kitts with his mom and stepdad, only for said mom and stepdad to cancel the vacation at the last minute to go on a belated honeymoon instead, leaving Angus high and dry at Barton. In the care of his sworn nemesis, Professor Hunham. 

There are other boys left behind too, but they all end up getting permission to leave with one kid's dad to go on a ski trip. Of course, Angus' parents can't be reached to give their permission, so he is stuck with Paul as well as Barton's cafeteria manager, Mary Lamb (Da'Vine Joy Randolph, wonderful in this role), who is mourning the loss of her son who died in Vietnam. What a jolly bunch these three make!

The thing is, you know what's going to happen in The Holdovers. Paul, Mary, and Angus are three very lonely misfits who have been "left behind" not just at the school but in life. To me, Mary represents the loneliness of grief, Angus represents the loneliness of anger, and Paul represents the loneliness of bitterness. And while we can tell that Mary will be ok--she is still open to connecting with others and still has a sense of humor despite her enormous loss--we're not so sure about Paul and Angus. Angus is young, but presumably on the path towards becoming a man like Paul: a man who has whittled down his life and dreams into the bare minimum because to hope for more would be too hurtful to bear. 

As Angus and Paul get to know each other over the course of the Christmas break that wasn't, they begin to lower their defenses and see the commonalities between them. If I'm being a little vague, it's because I don't want to give anything away which would diminish the emotional impact of watching The Holdovers without knowing all the details. Trust me, it's good. You can take my word on that. And you WILL probably cry, so have the tissues nearby.

But the movie is a tearjerker in the best way possible: it's cathartic. It's filled with love and hope without being schmaltzy or sentimental. It's about how broken people can heal each others' broken parts. It's also a really funny movie with immaculate vintage vibes. It's kind of like if Harold and Maude and Rushmore smoked a little weed (just a little) and then had a baby together. That baby would be The Holdovers. 

There's not much else to say. If you haven't seen The Holdovers yet, I really, really, really recommend it. It's a rare movie that I think most people who watch it will like, if not love, and find something within it that resonates. 

Grade: A