The Holdovers movie review

Better late than never. At the Ukrainian box office, you can now see Alexander Payne’s intellectual Christmas drama The Holdovers, about American education, American history, American politics, American family, and… about an intimate, cozy holiday in an unheated auditorium for a few lonely souls.

The film takes place on Christmas Eve 1970 in the Boston suburbs at an elite, private school for boys. Only three students remain on the empty campus, where even the heating has been turned off and the cafeteria is out of pastries (because almost everyone has left for the winter holidays). This is the teacher of the history of ancient civilizations, Paul Ganem (Paul Giamatti), whom no one likes because he is picky, too principled, a “stuffy” misanthrope, has a not very pleasant appearance, does not blink his artificial eye, suffers from excessive sweating, and abuses strong drinks. Angus, an excellent student, is the only one in the class who gets an A in History of Ancient Civilizations, but even he can’t stand the boring teacher. There’s also the black cook who runs the cafeteria, whose son was recently killed in Vietnam.

It would seem that for all three of them, this Christmas is irreparably spoiled: the woman is mourning her son; the boy is angry with his mother because she left him at the boarding school for a romantic New Year’s trip with her new husband; and Giamatti’s character does not celebrate at all because he is an atheist and a complete skeptic, and even disdains Christmas cookies. But it is clear that through misunderstandings and antipathy, despite the lack of festive mood and, as it turns out later, the lack of lust for life and apathetic drift on the waves of depression… all three of them eventually feel the warmth of that Christmas night in a cold building where the heating was turned off and everyone left, leaving only lonely, unrepentant losers.

Alexander Payne intertwines individual human stories with the global history of the United States, which he stretches in a thread or spiral from fifty years ago to the present. On the one hand, it seems to tell a heartwarming Christmas tale about three strangers who, abandoned by everyone (friends, family, relatives, the state…), unexpectedly formed a small community of sorts on one bad Christmas. On the other hand, it almost imperceptibly tells, primarily to Americans themselves, about the roots of the worst manifestations of their longstanding policies. How once upon a time, talented blacks were denied the opportunity to study and died in the war for a country that did not thank them for it, while the talentless and frankly stupid sons of the rich white elite graduated from the most prestigious colleges, the most prestigious universities like Princeton, Harvard, Yale…

But The Holdovers is not about racism. And Payne is not a black-and-white singer of one-sided politically correct propaganda. So the political demagoguery is mostly behind the scenes of a touching Christmas story. And the gifted student Angus, who does not have super-rich parents and is the only one who has passed the history of ancient civilizations with flying colors, is white.

Not only a lonely Christmas, but also hidden mental traumas unite the trio of broken or at least broken people. And all three of them are alienated and left behind not only for the holidays, but for life, alienated from the system in general. Despite the fact that teacher and student pretend to be self-sufficient cynics, in reality both, the one who has already lived most of his life and the one who has not even started his adult life, are falling into an inner abyss, and this painful gray-greenish truth suddenly pops up like a boil when it turns out that Angus and Mr. Ghanem are on the same antidepressants.

And a fair, principled teacher who gives grades solely for knowledge, not for the fact that the parents of a major paid for a new gym, is outside the system and is a kind of dinosaur, not for nothing that he is a teacher of ancient history. Just as outside the perimeter of the “campus,” where the campus is a metaphor for a conventionally “happy” society, one that bakes figurative cookies and celebrates Christmas at a large dining room table, not ashamed that the table was paid for with a bribe or filled with goodies for no good reason, is an alienated student abandoned “under the tree” by his own mother. The same is true for the mother of a murdered son, whom the state owes “stolen happiness.”

Surprisingly, despite its decadent sound and socio-political criticism, The Holdovers remains a “Christmas comedy”. Different and with a prefix of tragedy, but still a Christmas comedy. So the trio of outsiders eventually remembers how to smile and share their “family” warmth, not necessarily by blood or a common surname, under the Christmas paraphernalia, even if the unfortunate Christmas tree stands in the middle of an uncomfortable unheated public hall, crooked and without toys, and instead of gifts, the works of Marcus Aurelius.