A mix of Dead Poet’s Society and With Honors, The Holdovers hit me in the feels, the right movie at the right time. In Dead Poet’s Society, a non-traditional teacher shares his love of literature with prep school boys struggling to find their way. In With Honors, a group of college friends learn to care more about a homeless man dying of cancer than of grades or even graduation. Both deal with coming of age, death, and unexpected friendships. The Holdover swims in the same thematic mix with a prep school teacher and an unexpected group of friends stuck together over the holiday.
In Dead Poet’s Society, the Robin William’s character is the teacher all the prep school boys adore. He’s irreverent and passionate and the most likely to make a difference in his students’ lives.
The Paul Giamatti character in The Holdovers would end dead last in such a contest. He is as passionate about history as the Robin Williams character was about literature, but he can’t reach the students and has long ago stopped trying. The students don’t like him, his boss doesn’t like him, and the faculty don’t like him, so when one poor student gets left behind for Christmas, of course it’s with the teacher least likely to give a fuck.
If you’ve seen the Harry Potter where Ron and Harry stay at Hogwarts for Christmas, this is the opposite of that.
In The Holdovers, students sleep in the infirmary, the only building with heating, and it’s just the teacher, the students (eventually just one student), and the cook who is mourning her son who died recently in Vietnam.
I haven’t been in the Merry-Merry-Merry-Christmas Christmas-mood since COVID lockdowns, longer if I’m being honest.
Given the setup, I expected Home Alone style buffoonery, which seemed the best option as I’m trying not to watch movies that depress me. I haven’t been in the Merry-Merry-Merry-Christmas Christmas-mood since COVID lockdowns, longer if I’m being honest. We haven’t decorated, no lights outside or in, and the cupboards aren’t bare, but they’re pretty anemic, so my cup of cheer has been half-empty for awhile now.
All of which is to say that the student at prep school whose mother left him to fend for himself over the holiday with a curmudgeon teacher and a grieving mother of a soldier seemed more joyful than I’ve been feeling about Christmas lately. The trio were good company.
There are the requisite scenes of hilarity as seen in the trailer, the best of which is an homage to The Breakfast Club with the teacher chasing the student through the halls ala Bender the rebel, but rather than trying to ditch the teacher, the student holds back, peeking around corners, ensuring the teacher can follow. A bit of a cheeky rebel himself, although his mother and step-father threaten to send him to military school if he gets kicked out of another school, the repercussions being a life in the military during the Vietnam War with the picture of the dead soldier, the cook’s son, a constant reminder of what is at stake.
But this setup is the prelude to the Christmas movie I didn’t know I needed. It could have gone the way of hilarity and superficial fun, but Paul Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, and Dominic Sessa skim the surface of superficial before taking a deep dive into human relationships.
What I appreciate most about the movie is that the characters aren’t happy, they’re deliriously unhappy in their own ways, tied up in their own bullshit, and yet tied together for the few weeks of Christmas break, and they don’t try to kill each other, they don’t yell at each other (much) and they don’t compete. When they disagree—and three such disparate characters will surely disagree—they tell each other the truth, and it doesn’t escalate into a something uglier. It’s just the truth. You were an asshole, here’s how not to be an asshole, let’s move on.
Nobody cancels anything. Not even Christmas.
Since the world has given “get off my lawn” vibes on a global scale since 2020, it’s nice to see humans who don’t have to shit all over each other, compete with each other, argue about who is right, who is wrong, and who (or what brand) should be cancelled. Nobody cancels anything. Not even Christmas.
If a self-involved teacher, a privileged prep-school boy, and a grieving black cook in the late 1960s can form a bond, then so can we, despite our differences. I laughed and I cried (multiple times), and I needed both.
I used to love Lifetime Christmas movies. Cheesy yes, but they were the happy I needed when I was a single mom with two kids depending on me. They kept me in the holiday spirit, helped me give that to my kids while keeping myself a little hopeful and a little happy, despite the struggles.
There will come a time when I will embrace the cheesy happiness of those movies once again, because I miss them, or I miss the hopeful person I am when I watch them.
But this is the movie I needed when I am more Grinch than cheery member of Whoville. The Holdovers is a reminder that we all have our shit, but that doesn’t make us bad humans or bad friends or bad parents. We can tell the truth without being cruel, we can disagree without alienating, and we can form bonds with people unlike ourselves over nothing more than shared humanity. That’s the message I needed.