Movie Review: The Holdovers

A couple of days ago, I watched one of the Oscar nominated films with my family. There is a movie directed by Alexander Payne called The Holdovers, and if you haven’t seen it yet I really recommend you see it because it is a really touching and moving story. I had seen Alexander Payne’s other movie, The Descendants, a long time ago. It’s about a father living in Hawaii who is doing his best to raise his two daughters and cope with his wife being in a coma. It was a very moving film. I heard about The Holdovers from watching all of the awards shows this year, and I saw one of the actors in the movie, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, win several awards for her performance in the movie. I saw Da’Vine in one movie called My Name is Dolemite, which stars Eddie Murphy, and she was really good in that role. I can see why she won so many awards this year for her role in The Holdovers, though, because she was really good in the movie. Update since last writing this post: I nearly teared up when Da’Vine won for Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars this year. Her speech was also very moving; she said that she thought she had to be someone else, but she realized she just needed to be herself. This was a good reminder for me because I tend to be critical about myself and think, Maybe I should be someone different or change who I am. I still want to grow and develop, but I am learning that I can grow and develop in a way that is true to myself. It made me think of the concept of cherry, plum, peach and damson in Buddhism; each tree has its own unique qualities, and one cannot be like the other. I also love Paul Giamatti, and he was really good in his role in this movie (I remember watching him as a kid when he starred in this funny movie called Big Fat Liar with Frankie Muniz and Amanda Bynes.)

If you haven’t seen The Holdovers, it’s about Paul Hunham, a curmudgeonly history teacher at Barton Academy, an all-male boarding school in New England who stays during the school’s winter break to look after five young men who won’t be able to come home during the holidays to see their families. Paul runs a pretty tight ship, and this is evident even before the kids go on vacation. Many of his students got bad grades in his class and are close to failing. However, one of the students, Angus Tully, is the only one who got a B+ in the class. Five kids end up staying behind at the school, and even though Angus is planning to go to St. Kitts with his mom, his mom cancels the plans for him to go with her and he has to end up staying at the school over winter break. I seriously thought that the five kids were going to all stay with Mr. Hunham, but Alexander Payne got me with a plot twist (and your girl here loves a plot twist.) One of the holdovers has a wealthy father, and the father ends up picking up the kids to go on a ski trip with him, which leaves Angus as the only one to stay with Mr. Hunham. Over the course of the film, Paul, Angus and Mary, the chef at the school, get to know each other and find out they have a lot in common with each other even though they have gone through different things in life.

I really loved the scene where Mary, Paul and Angus are at a restaurant and Paul orders cherries jubilee because he sees someone at the other table ordered one, but the waitress tells him they can’t bring cherry jubilee because Angus is under the legal drinking age and cherries jubilee has alcohol in it. Paul tries to argue with her, and Angus is upset at being treated like a little kid, but I love Mary because she just calmly asks the waitress if they have cherries and ice cream, and the waitress gladly brings them cherries and ice cream. They go outside the restaurant and enjoy their own cherries jubilee by pouring alcohol over the cherries and ice cream and lighting it on fire to mimic the flambee style they saw at the restaurant. It was also really touching when Angus got to visit his father. Angus and Paul end up having a lot in common, one being that they both take the same medication.

I really loved Mary’s part in the movie. Mary’s only son, Curtis, was killed in the Vietnam War and she is grieving his death. There is a part in the movie where Paul, Angus and Mary go to a Christmas party held at Lydia’s house (Lydia is on the staff at the school.) They are having fun, and Angus even falls in love with and kisses Lydia’s niece. However, Mary ends up thinking about her son, Curtis, and gets really drunk, and Paul finds out that even though he was in love with Lydia, he finds out at the party that she has a boyfriend already, so Paul suggests that he, Mary and Angus leave the party. Outside of the house, Paul argues with Angus and tells him he thought he was going to go home on break to see his father, and Angus tells him that his father is dead. Mary calls out Paul on his behavior towards Angus, and Paul self-reflects. When Paul changes his relationship with Angus, Angus begins to open up to him and trust him more. Even though Paul got in trouble for taking Angus off campus, I still appreciate that he did that for Angus. While the three of them (Paul, Mary and Angus) are eating Christmas dinner, Paul has them list off any requests or wishes they have, and Angus’s wish is to go off campus to explore the city of Boston. However, Paul knows he will get Angus and himself in trouble if he does that, so he says no, leaving Angus feeling angry and hurt. However, Mary is very straightforward and honest, and so she says Paul should take Angus to the city because that is what he wanted. Angus didn’t get to leave the campus all winter break unlike the other students, so it wouldn’t be fair for him to have to stay while everyone else had fun. However, after they get back from the city, Angus’s mom and stepfather come to the school and let Paul know it wasn’t okay to bring Angus to see his dad. Angus’s dad struggled with mental illness and became very abusive towards Angus’s mom, and so she didn’t want her or Angus to see him again. They threaten to take Angus out of the school, but Paul admits he was the one to propose the trip to Boston and so he gets fired. I was kind of sad that Paul got fired from his teaching position at the school, but I also admire that he was honest and wanted to stick up for Angus.

This movie really taught me that sometimes you find friendships in the most unlikely connections and it’s not always about having a lot of friends but making a few close connections with others where you empathize with the other person’s suffering and genuinely want to help them. You may not always know how those bonds develop, but they do in the most interesting ways. Many people felt sympathy for Mary after she lost her son in the Vietnam War, but through her friendship with Paul and Angus, she found people who could genuinely show up for her and sit with her pain rather than run from it. I have learned through my own experiences losing loved ones that grief is an uncomfortable process, one that brings up a lot of emotions, and it can be uncomfortable to sit with yourself and process that emotional pain. But it really helps to have people around who can show up and just sit or listen without judgment, whether they have experienced your exact situation or not. Angus and Paul can also relate to Mary’s experience with grief because they themselves have experienced loneliness and loss. Angus wasn’t allowed to see his dad for many years and that was a painful experience, and he can’t go home to see his mom. Paul also deals with loneliness, and he is able to sit with Mary’s grief and show up for her, even if it’s just to watch TV together. The three of these people laugh, cry and survive the winter break together, and they develop an incredible bond with one another.

It was pretty painful watching the scene where Angus gets injured while messing around in the gym. He runs down the hall and Paul has to run after him to catch up, and when Paul finally reaches the gym, Angus jumps over some gym equipment when he isn’t supposed to, and it’s not until Angus lets out a severe cry that Paul realizes Angus is badly hurt. The doctors have to fix Angus’s shoulder because it got dislocated when he jumped over the equipment and injured himself. It was pretty painful to watch this scene, to be honest, because I saw Angus in so much pain.

Honestly, if you haven’t seen this movie, I recommend you see it. It is really good. And the trailer is excellent; it’s what got me to watch the movie in the first place.

The Holdovers. 2023. 133 minutes. Rated R for language, some drug use and brief sexual material.