Let me start off by saying I am not a Christmas movie person. While I do have some personal traditional watches like Bridget Jones, I really don't do the whole Home Alone marathon, or the classic dysfunctional-family-christmas-romcom thing. And that's because most of them are poorly shot, without a particular focus on artistry, and the story is sub-par, at best.
Yet here I am, writing a Christmas movie review.
Photo: Focus Features
When I first read about The Holdovers, I knew I wanted to watch it for Paul Giamatti who, in my book, is a painfully underrated actor. I loved him in Billions where, despite playing a deeply unpleasant and dislikable character, he demonstrated real acting mastery time and again.
The Holdovers is basically the story of an antisocial, much-reviled history professor who is tasked with remaining on campus at boarding school to chaperone those students who, for some reason reason or another, aren't going home for the holidays. Eventually, this sees him stranded with only one boy, Angus, whose "new family" (mum and stepdad) have decided their holidays are better off without an unruly teenager. Together with Angus and the school's cook, Mary (whose son has just died on the battlefront), Paul (Giamatti) must face a different kind of Christmas.
A Christmas with people you don't have that much in common with. Or think you don't, anyway. If there's one lesson to be gleaned from the film, it's one that I've personally clung to down the past few years -- we are, and always will be, more alike than we are different. The trick is finding those similarities.
From the opening shot, I thought I'd absolutely hate it.
I was a little put off seeing the run time was over 2 hours, and when I saw one of the opening shots, a drawn-out, very cinematic rolling view of the Christmas faculty dinner, I thought "oh crap, it's gonna be one of those artisty, pretentious movies".
In some ways, it was. Yet that was one of the things I found myself liking best. In a box office that's saturated with social and political virtue signalling of various degrees, it's rare to find a film whose chief focus is making a nice film, you know? Setting the mood, plunging the audience into a certain vibe -- these used to be valued tools of the budding filmmaker, only to be traded, of late, for empty slogans, and rushed scenes, so that the viewer can check his phone for the millionth time.
It's quite rare to find a director that lingers on a shot simply for the shot's sake, and I found myself enjoying that a great deal.
Photo: Focus Features
The story is, true to most Christmas classics, less than impressive.
Yet, unlike most "Christmas classics", it makes up for it in cinematic artistry. There's this subtle beauty to the long shots, to the characters' awkwardness, that makes an average plot forgivable. In some ways, the director lets you know early on you're not watching this movie for the story, but for how they story is told.
Now, that's something storytellers often forget. We focus so much on what we're saying, what happens next, where so-and-so character goes that we neglect how the story unfolds. And it's a constant question in the artist's mind -- should I focus more on the plot, or on how the plot unfolds?
Can brilliance in one excuse a lacking in the other?
Certainly. Personally, I've often favored movies where the plot was stellar, but the cinematic aspect was somewhat clunky, but The Holdovers is the opposite. The clunky, or rather not even clunky, merely simple story is more than forgiven on account of how they tell the story. The little things about the characters, the acting which is just superb.
Why Christmas?
While the holiday provides a nice setting, this is a story that can be told at any other point in the year. Except Christmas is particularly poignant, being as it is a time for connection, for family, for love, for laughter. And while that sounds lovely in theory, it often puts us, individuals, under tremendous pressure.
Many times, our families are dysfunctional. Not in the cutesy Christmas comedy way, but in the heartbreaking, I don't belong here way.
Many people are alone at Christmas, and feel castigated for not having a partner or children to gather around them during the holiday season.
Then, there's those of us who've lost those people we'd want around at Christmas, and now don't know where we fit. There's a horrible isolation that happens after loss, when the immediate shock has worn off, and people start drifting away, because they don't know what to do with your sadness. Yet Christmastime comes for these people, too, as it does all of us.
I liked The Holdovers as a Christmas movie precisely because it didn't cite the same merry, empty ideology that "despite your uncle's toxic traits, and your perv brother-in-law or whatever, Christmas can be wonderful if you suck it up and embrace the kookiness". I think that's bullshit, so I was glad they didn't tell me that.
When the movie was over, I was almost crying with sympathy for the characters. The writing, the light, everything is so perfectly understated as to reinforce the film's powerful message: that life goes on. That you are capable of survival, of change, of growth despite tremendous adversity.
It addressed questions like am I the sins of my parents?, am I the sum of what I've lost?, how the fuck do you laugh and play music after a tragedy?. And those questions are real. They're things that people the world over are asking themselves, particularly around this hallowed merry time, and maybe they don't have an answer.
So I, for one, was glad for this movie sending out a "maybe" into that sorrow that, for many people, is Christmas.
