'The Holdovers' Review: Sympathy for the Devil
(Image via Focus Features)
Director Alexander Payne and writer David Hemingson have dropped a deceptively complex movie into theaters this holiday season. On the surface, this is a charming throwback movie that consciously evokes character driven dramas of the 1970s and 80s- down to the slightly grainy opening footage that simulates the jitter you used to see when film frames weren’t quite aligned.
Upon first watching this movie, you will likely come away with the impression that you just saw a lightly heartwarming tale with some fairly retrogressive messaging. The setting is a prestigious, and apparently expensive, private boarding school during a New England winter in 1970. Our trio of main characters consists of Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti), a disgruntled ancient history teacher, Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), a troubled and intelligent student, and Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), a Black woman who runs the school’s kitchen and has recently lost her son in the Vietnam War. Through some contrived plot mechanics, Angus is left behind as the only “holdover” for the winter break- a student who has to stay at school because he has nowhere else to go. Paul and Mary are tasked as his adult caretakers.
Some critics have rightly pointed out that this is yet another story about a privileged white person (or two depending on how privileged you think Paul is) receiving all the sympathy and plot attention at the expense of characters of color, or others who are in more disadvantaged circumstances. However, if you look closely, that is exactly the conundrum that Payne and Hemingson are asking you to consider. Who deserves compassion? Are we capable, or responsible for, extending it to everyone? What happens if we can’t see those we hate as equally deserving of some amount of empathy?
(Image via Focus Features)
Angus is indeed very privileged. He’s getting a good education that his wealthy mother and stepfather are paying for. He will be protected from the draft, as will most of his classmates, because he will go to college and will have no trouble paying for it. Mary’s equally intelligent African-American son could have gone to college, but couldn’t afford it. Instead, he was drafted, and his only consolation was that he could then go to college using the GI bill. Sadly, he never made it home.
The death of Mary’s son is just the latest in a long line of injustices that troubles Paul, who acts as our audience proxy for most of the movie. Paul hates all the things we still hate 50 years after the setting of this film- people who get more than they deserve, people who don’t appreciate what they have, and the inherent unfairness of a world that is designed, consciously or not, to disadvantage poor people and people of color. Watching him lash out at his spoiled students is initially very satisfying. But the more we learn about Paul’s past, and the more we start guessing at Angus’ future, the more we should be thinking about the consequences of Paul’s anger and how he acts on it.
As someone who enjoys subtly in movies, this is one of those times when I’m conflicted about how a director/writer team has chosen to convey their theme. Just by skimming the reviews you can tell that everyone has their own takeaway. I think some of the reviewers, and probably many of the viewers, have come away missing the point entirely. I think it’s an important point to make in our current era of extreme polarized views where phrases like “eat the rich” have become part of popular discourse.
(Image via Focus Features)
Here’s the deal- most of Paul’s students will remain unfairly privileged no matter how much he punishes them by giving them terrible grades and demeaning their intelligence. There is nothing he can do about this inherent imbalance in the world. Nothing at all. What Paul comes to realize, however, is that he can do something about the kind of rich people these students become. Do they become entitled and hateful rich people? Or can he bend some of these boys towards becoming better by forgiving the world for its injustice and acting compassionate himself? Angus is in a transitional period where he can learn the habit of giving in to his impulses, or he can build on his potential to be a better man.
You generally don’t create ethical and compassionate people by being dismissive of them. If you repeatedly demonstrate to someone that the world hates them for what they are, especially someone who is young and impressionable, they are unlikely to change just to please you, the person who is being hateful towards them. More likely they will try to find someone who accepts them as they are. And if who they are is a horrible person then, congratulations, you have just encouraged all the awful people to band together and stew in their awfulness. And probably recruit more awful people to join them. And the cycle goes on.
The Holdovers is a movie about radical acceptance couched in a feel-good holiday package. It’s not fair that people who are generally good already are the people who must take up the mantle of also being good to unpleasant people in the hopes that they will change. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Paul and Mary have Biblical names and that the students at the school have to attend chapel. Jesus was a radical because he preached being kind to everyone. Multiple religious traditions across time have preached this maxim because, even after thousand of years of human progress, we have to keep telling our deep down lizard brain not to punch people we don’t like.
If you want to read a real review by a professional that conveys this point with more wit than I possess, check out this one from the Daily Beast https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/the-holdovers-review-alexander-paynes-best-movie-in-a-decade. Or you can just go see the movie and decide for yourself. It’s a tad too long and not nearly as funny as the trailer implies, but it makes up for it in philosophical weightiness. If you choose to look at it that way.