T&K's XMas (2023) Advent Calendar: Day 10 - The Holdovers (1-1-1)

 2023, d. Alexander Payne - in theatre

The What 100:
Paul is a history teacher at Barton, a prestigious private boys' school he once also attended. He's erudite with a superiority complex, and is generally disliked by staff and students alike. Mary doesn't seem to mind him though. She's the kitchen manager, and recently lost her son -- a former Barton student -- in Vietnam. At Christmas break, Paul is forced to watch "the holdovers" - kids with no place to go - and Mary volunteers to stay on. Ultimately, the only holdover is Angus, a smart but troubled kid who is generally disliked by staff and students alike. This is how they got on.

1 Great:
Da'Vine Joy Randolph.
Randolph as Mary is outstanding in the role, and the role was an absolute surprise. The film doesn't introduce her with the sense of importance she has to the story, and it's a role that could have been much more cliched or just tokenism in a lesser movie. But Mary is a full character, yes a grieving mother, but that's not what defines her. She carries herself with confidence and grace, commands a level of respect even if its not shown to her, and she doesn't suffer fools, which seems to be why she gets along with Paul Hunham.  Randolph carries Mary's grief in every scene, but shows who Mary is by how it affects her from moment to moment, how it doesn't preclude her from her duty or her anger or her faith or her survival. 

She is a Black woman in a very white institution and very aware of it, the film is too, and while it's never the issue front and center, it's definitely a facet of her daily life that she's long ago figured out how to cope with.  She had hoped her working at the school, thus permitting her son's attendance at the school, would give him the same advantages of the rich, entitled white kids, but the stark truth of systemic racism showed that the education is not the great parallel, money is.  Randolph shows anger, regret, helplessness, and resignation at the injustice of it all in her beautifully subtle performance.  

1 Good:

Defied expectations.

I saw the trailer for The Holdovers a few months back, which really leaned into the 1970s of it all (the trailer was cut like a 70's film promo as well) and it seemed like a cliche-laden movie that could go horrendously wrong in many different ways. It seemed like a trite comedy where the lonely sarcastic teacher and the lonely sarcastic kid find their common ground and become less lonely, less sarcastic people due to spending time with mirror versions of themselves, all while a perfunctory Black woman tells them what's what over and over.

It isn't that movie, even though that is kind of what happens. Director Payne and writer David Hemingson set up the situation where Angus is going to "come out of his shell" thanks to being around an older version of himself, while Mr. Hunham is going to soften from being around a younger version of himself. But quickly into the film, the idea of Paul Hunham being just a curmudgeonly asshole is kind of thrown aside as we see him engage with both the school's politics-playing dean, where Paul's true character (which is partly aspiring to uphold the tenets of the school's founder whom he greatly respected, and also partly resentment of the freeloading children with their golden tickets in life). He does want to be a good teacher, he does want to inspire, but he certainly seems to have lost a sense of flexibility in his approach.  The same with Angus who isn't so much an unlikable kid as someone who, like both Mary and Paul, doesn't suffer fools lightly (but also like Paul has a misguided sense of who the fools are). We are shown early that Angus isn't an asshole full stop, and is capable of being compassionate and congenial.  

We're shown that we're not just supposed to like these two characters because of their sharp wit and humourous abrasiveness, but that they are innately decent people who have, for reasons that get explored, distanced themselves from connecting with others.  

It's a film that could have been both outrageous in its comedy and manipulative emotionally and it veers away from those wild tonal swings. It stays in a light-drama realm that allows for humour and heart, but settles into a consistent tone that's less about provoking a reaction out of the audience than it is about understanding the characters in play.

1 Bad:
I had recently seen about 4 minutes of Paul Giamatti in a TV series called 30 Coins. It was a completely out-of-context viewing, and Giamatti was overacting and being slimy and the camerawork was tight on his face and the lighting was blowing him out and maybe he was made up to look particularly disgusting but it was a thoroughly unappealing 4 minutes and I wondered if Giamatti was a good actor anymore.

Turns out yes. He is really, really good in The Holdovers, but is his character here too much? He's given a lazy eye (which I believe was a contact lens), he's described as malodorous, he drinks too much, he's prone to quoting things in latin, being caustically witty, and Giamatti provides the character a very distinctive, pantomime walk. Is it too much? 

I have to say, it's not "bad", but I couldn't reconcile while watching the film, nor after, whether it was too much.

Also, in keeping with the advent calendar theme...it's not really *that* Christmassy.

META:
I hadn't heard about the grooming allegations made against Alexander Payne (which he denied publicly) until I started doing a bit of reading while doing this write up. And beyond those allegations there are some unsettling details about his behaviour on an early film shoot of his.

I enjoyed the film without knowing these things. Do I enjoy the film less as a result of knowing this about its director's past? 

It's possible had I known these things I wouldn't have wanted to even see the film, and not because I outright believe in "cancelling" someone, but because I maybe just don't want to engage with ... all of that.

It's that same old question of can or should you separate the art from the artist. I know I have great difficulty doing so. 

There are bad people who continually do bad things, and then there are people who have done bad things in their past, and maybe have or maybe have not atoned for them. Which is Alexander Payne? 

Beyond allegations from over 20 years ago, and his behaviour on the set of his initial feature, his nose seems fairly clean, but another question that has no definitive answer is should we still support the works of men who managed to advance their careers despite toxic behaviour towards women, even if the toxicity hasn't persisted?  Again, public atonement would go a long way into easing some of my discomfort.

Ugh. This is never a topic I relish exploring.

Merry Christmas.